Now, a few scientists are questioning Darwinism on many fronts. I wonder how long Darwinisms life span will be. Marxism, another theory which, in true Victorian style, sought to explain everything, is dead everywhere but on university campuses and in the minds of psychotic dictators. Maybe Darwinism will be different. Maybe it will last. But its difficult to believe it will. Theories that presume to explain everything without much evidence rarely do. Theories that outlive their era of conception and cannot be verified rarely last unless they are faith based. And Darwinism has been such a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies, maybe we would be better off without it as a dominant force.
Ben Stein, protagonist in the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed opening in theaters April 18.
From an article on NewsBlaze

Veggie Tales of Human Evolution 04/30/2008
April 30, 2008  Evolutionists may not know who our human ancestors were,
but they know they were vegans. That seems to be the essence of a couple of
new twists on the human evolution saga.

Pear-shaped tones: Paranthropus has been called the
Nutcracker Man because of robust teeth assumed strong enough to munch
on nuts and seeds. Enter the Sugar-Plum Fairy into this Nutcracker Suite.
Science
Daily reported it more likely that this ancient hominin (roughly
a homonym for hominid) ate fruit. Researchers at University of Arkansas
examined microscopic scratches on the teeth and deduced that Paranthropus
wasnt eating nuts, even if he had the jaws and skull for them. Instead,
it appeared he had been dining on a kind of tutti-fruity jell-o. The article
is accompanied by an artists conception of the furry father figure sucking
on a big juicy fruit.
Gorillas, for instance, have the equipment for chewing tough leaves,
but will take fruit every time if given the choice. The morphology
suggests what P. boisei could eat, but not necessarily what it
did eat, said the lead researcher. He explained why this change
in thinking is more than a fad diet:

These findings totally run counter to what people have been saying for the
last half a century, said Peter Ungar, professor of anthropology in the
J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. We have to sit
back and re-evaluate what we once thought.....
This finding represents a fundamental shift in the way
researchers look at the diets of these hominins.
This challenges the fundamental assumptions of why
such specializations occur in nature,Ungar said. It shows that
animals can develop an extreme degree of specialization without the specialized
object becoming a preferred resource.

This is indeed worrisome. What will scientists in 2058 be overthrowing that
todays scientists will claim for the next 50 years? Even then,
who should re-evaluate the re-evaluators?

Cave Cookout: Whats more iconic than brutish cavemen and
cave-women barbecuing mammoth meat over a campfire? Better add the salad
bar. National
Geographic News now says that Neanderthals ate vegetables. The truth
is in the tooth, they say. It seems logical to me that they
took advantage of any food sources they had available in their environments,
which would vary from place to place and from time to time.
An Iraqi Neanderthal apparently liked plant food, according to its discoverers.
The claim needs a disclaimer:

Henry cautions that Shanidar III is only one fossil and does
not provide enough evidence to make conclusive statements about the
entirety of the Neandertal diet.
The finding suggests that characterizing Neanderthals as
obligate meat-eaters may be wrong, but there is still a lot more work to be
done on this issue, Henry said.

In spite of the disclaimers, the researchers claimed that by employing various
methods they could get a much more realistic picture of paleodiets.

What the Public Is Told
Fundamental assumptions may continue to be overthrown, but the parade of human
evolution displayed for the public marches on.
A press release described a new exhibit on human evolution by the
University
of Pennsylvania that offers
thought-provoking and insightful experiences at viewing humans in the broad context
of mammals. Janet Monge and Alan Mann wrote of Darwins theory,

This powerful theory, which appears in the news virtually every week because
of the controversy surrounding it, has vast implications that affect every
aspect of our lives. As the explanatory tool of all the related fields
in the biological sciences, nothing makes sense except in the light of
evolutionary process. Our new exhibit makes this point during Penns
Year of Evolution, which celebrates Charles Darwins 200th birthday.

If a controversy surrounds a theory 149 years old, there must be at least a few smart
people who have reasons to doubt it. One might think those controversial issues deserve
be aired and addressed. What are those controversies? The article didnt
say. It simply consigned all
doubters to an emotional, full-immersion, multi-media re-education camp:

The genesis of the idea came from Alan Manns realization
that students seemed to understand the broad impact of evolutionary
process if they could witness it for themselves in their own bodies
and minds. In order to evoke this response in the context
of the exhibit, we challenge visitors to try to understand and
define what it means to be humanto revel in the experience of
humanness. We ask them to witness the evolutionary process
and to contextualize the human experience. This part of the
exhibit is peppered with over 200 touchable casts of both modern and
extinct mammals and primates, including many of our human ancestors,
our chimp relatives, and even comparisons to horses and whales.
Visitors are now ready to see evolutionary history in their
own bodies.

A skeptic not yet immersed in the revelry might ask whether casts of extinct and living animals necessarily
demonstrate an ancestral relationship. In addition, calling certain casts human ancestors
and chimp relatives seems to beg the question that Darwins theory is
the only or best explanation for the observations. The parade continues without
a misstep.
What evidence does the museum show forth during the controlled experience to support the broad
view that humans emerged from other mammals by an undirected process of mutation
and natural selection? Some listed were: bad backs, difficult childbirths, teeth that
do not fit in our jaws, as well as many other maladies that are best understood
from an evolutionary perspective.
In other words, the authors appealed to dysteleology
(bad design)  a theological issue  the assumption being that
no God would design such maladies. But if evolution is so good at adapting
animals to their environments, as in whales and horses, the same charge could
be leveled at the evolutionary process. Why would not every stage of every
missing link be perfectly adapted to its niche for its time? Why would bad
backs and insufficiently-sized birth canals persist for 100,000 years? The
authors did not ask such questions. They did, however, make it clear that
the understanding of evolution requires purposelessness:
it is not progress and it is not predictable.
A corollary of the undirected nature of evolution is that it is not
progressive and it is not complete. This brings us back to the diet question: What implications do
changing patterns in diet have on human health and disease? How will human-based
environmental change influence human biology and culture in the future?
Evolution is not just about the past. Its what was, what is, and what will be.
The goals of this exhibit are much more expansive than the hall in
which it is housed.

If the exhibit succeeds, our visitors will leave knowing that humans
are part of the natural worldone species among the many mammals and primates
all descended from a common ancestorand that we are the product of
the process of evolution, which has made us functional through a
series of compromises, but not perfect, as can be seen in
certain human ailments that may be the consequence of our evolution.
Our visitors will appreciate the many ways in which our evolutionary past
defines our bodies, our minds, our culture, and our destiny.
They will understand that human societies and cultures have developed
in different ways in response to specific environments around the world, but also
in similar ways in response to the same basic human needs. They will
have seen that scientists are constantly searching for, finding,
and interpreting evidence of the evolutionary process, and they will
begin to imagine the impact of future medical and biological developments
on human evolution as they join us in exploring our shared
history and potential future as human animals.

A major theme of the museum, stated and restated, emphasizes evolutions practical relevance:
The evolutionary process and its outcomes have a profound impact on every
aspect of our daily lives. The Answers in Genesis Creation Museum might
agree, but with completely different assumptions, definitions, aims and conclusions.

The block quote above won Stupid Evolution
Quote of the Week because it
begs numerous questions
and is self-refuting. Experienced readers will
know why. Just look at all the values words: aims, succeeds, knowing, compromises, perfect,
appreciate, searching for, finding, interpreting evidence as if an evolved monkey
brain even has access to reality, let alone any hope of knowing anything.
The aims of this exhibit exceed the capabilities of an evolved cerebrum.
Why have aims, anyway, if evolution is aimless?
Notice that the first two stories indicated major revolutions in the
storytelling plot. Mixed in with those were doubts about the ability of
science in 2008 to say anything definitive about past behaviors. As for the
ailments our cave ancestors supposedly passed on to us, these have all been answered
with creationary responses (e.g., Creation
Magazine and Technical
Journal)  as if that were even necessary. It would be
gratuitous to respond to any self-refuting proposition.
We hope the bottom line message of Year of Evolution was not
lost on pastors, churchgoers, students, parents and thinking citizens. They
told you themselves that this controversial issue of human origins is not just
about science, fossils and bad backs.
It has a profound impact on every aspect of our daily lives.
If our potential future as human animals is anything like that being
explored today (see next entry), with no moral compass, no values and no
direction, be afraid  be very afraid.
Next headline on:Early Man 
Fossils 
Dumb Ideas 
Darwinism 
Education 
Politics and Ethics

Darwinian Ethics Launch Unexplored
Blessings or Curses 04/30/2008
April 30, 2008  For a theory ostensibly restricted to biology, evolution sure has a
lot of supporters interested in politics and ethics. Look at what leading
Darwinists are promoting. Some of them are rushing headlong where angels fear to
tread. Where they will end up is anyones guess. Their potential
for changing life, culture, religion, education  even what it means to be human 
will impact every man, woman and child.

Imaginary religion: Those who saw Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
will remember Dawkins, Wilson, Myers and other Darwinians equating religion to fantasy.
A particularly acute recent example can be found in
New
Scientist. Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics ascribed religion
to a figment of the human imagination. Why are humans the only animals
who practice religion? because theyre the only creatures to have
evolved imagination. Bloch did not explain how intangible realities
emerge from physical ones. By what criteria could one judge whether Bloch actually knew
his proposition to be true, or was merely imagining it?

Having an affair with evolutionary ethics: A pre-conference press release
from University of Wisconsin - Madison about
a bioethics forum held April 17-18 expected it to be an evolutionary affair.
The line-up included a whos who of Darwinism promoters: Sean B. Carroll, Eugenie
Scott, Ronald Numbers, and John Haught. The press release felt it necessary to
shout down any hecklers:

Evolution, the process of change over time in the heritable characteristics
or traits of a population of organisms, is a bedrock theory of modern biology.
In recent years, it has become socially controversial, as proponents of
creationism and intelligent design have argued the theory does
not adequately explain the complexity of life. Efforts to integrate alternative
theories of life into school curricula have generated much public debate
and legal wrangling.

The conference promised accurate scientific information and discussion of
related social and ethical issues and the implications of our
work in the life sciences.

Follow the money: Erika Check Hayden reported in Nature1 on happenings at
Californias Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the embryonic-stem-cell
research organization swimming in money from taxpayers $3 billion dole in a
2005 ballot initiative. Recipients are almost giddy with disbelief at the
windfall. One scientist described like feeling in la-la land when
it dawned on him that it was not $3 million, which seemed like a lot,
but $3 billion with a b on the check.
If $3 billion seemed like a dream four years ago, Hayden said, it is now
a reality that is changing not only the way science is done in California, but is
resonating across the US biomedical landscape.
The article mentioned
embryonic stem cells 5 times, but nothing about adult stem cells or the new
induced pluripotent stem cells derived from skin.
Do the universities and labs
receiving the money have any clear ethical guidelines to prevent abuse? Hayden pointed to one
episode involving apparent conflict of interest. The episode is only one
in a series of incidents that have raised questions about the wisdom of
putting the institutions that benefit from the CIRM in charge of governing it.
Do they have any medical successes? No clinical trials of treatments
derived from embryonic stem cells are yet under way, and CIRMs 10-year
goal of demonstrating a cure for one disease seems difficult, if not
impossible, to meet. California taxpayers have given scientists a huge loan
with no payback schedule, no ethical guidelines, and no external audit.
The year 2015 could come and go without a single patient getting relief, long after
the voters have forgotten about what they authorized ten years before.

Playing God: Even the progressive
Scotsman
newspaper seemed alarmed at experiments being proposed to breed human-animal chimeras.
Dr. Callum MacKellar, from the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, warned that little
is stopping rogue scientists from inseminating a chimpanzee with human sperm in an
attempt to produce a humanzee. After all, theyve bred a liger (lion + tiger)
zorse (zebra + horse), wholphin (whale + dolphin), lepjag (leopard and jaguar),
and zonkey (zebra + donkey). The attempt of mating a human and an ape may
not work, but it is within the range of possibility the offspring could be born
alive. Dr MacKellar said the resulting creature could raise ethical
dilemmas, such as whether it would be treated as human or animal, and what rights
it would have.
If man is just an animal, whats to stop
the attempt  other than a universally-accepted standard of morality?
The yuck factor may not be enough. Consider the statements of
Professor Hugh McLachlan, professor of applied philosophy at Glasgow Caledonian
University's School of Law and Applied Sciences. He couldnt find an
ethical pole star to prevent it. If it turns out in the future there
was fertilisation between a human animal and a non-human animal,
its an idea that is troublesome, but in terms of what particular
ethical principle is breached its not clear to me, he said.
I share their squeamishness and unease, but Im not sure that unease can
be expressed in terms of an ethical principle.
Moses, of course,
expressed a divine injunction against bestiality. Such antiquated norms
were long ago discarded by most secular scientists. That leaves any
strictures as flimsy defenses against human pride and greed.
Its unnecessary and ridiculous and no serious scientist would consider such a thing,
said Professor Bob Millar, director of the Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Sciences Unit.
Ethically, its not appropriate. Says who?
Reporter Jennifer Hawthorne had opened by asking, Half man, half chimp 
should we beware the apemans coming?
The article left it as an open  if ominous  question.

An inextinguishable human conscience, a
prideful, selfish heart that has abandoned its Creator, no moral compass 
the world is poised for evil like it has never seen, carrying the whimpering
consciences of a few along on a wild ride into the darkness, who knows where.
Next headline on:Darwinism 
Politics and Ethics 
Bible and Theology

Sweet Solutions from Nature 04/29/2008
April 29, 2008  Human engineers continue to look at plants and animals for
inspiration. Biomimetics  the imitation of biology for design technology 
shows no sign of running out of ideas.

Sweet gas: A spoonful of sugar in the gas tank?
Science
Daily reported on progress in converting plant sugars into clean-burning hydrogen 
using biological enzymes. This could give a new meaning to power plant.

Moooove on: Speaking of enzymes, fuel technicians have isolated an
enzyme in a cows stomach that shows promise for efficient conversion of plant
sugars into ethanol. Science
Dailys gut reaction to this story was positive: The fact that we can
take a gene that makes an enzyme in the stomach of a cow and put it into a plant
cell means that we can convert what was junk before into biofuel, said one
professor of crop and soil science.

See ya sooner, alligator: Yuck: alligator blood. What good could come
from that? Infection-fighting drugs, reported
National
Geographic News. Scientists are intrigued that alligators live with frequent
bloody wounds in bacteria-laden muddy swamps but rarely get infected. Scientists
at Louisiana University found that alligator serum fights more bacteria than human
serum. If we can harness the alligators secrets, said one researcher,
we could be on the verge of a major advance in medical science.

Drag queen: The dragline silk of spiders continues to be a holy
grail for materials scientists. A German physics team reported in PNAS
some initial success in getting the proteins to assemble into fibers.1
To do it, they squeezed the proteins through tiny orifices similar to the spinnerets on a
spiders abdomen. The BBC
News published a report about it. Spiderman, here we come.

In the alligator story, National Geographic noted
that alligators have innate immune systems while humans have adaptive
immune systems. Although innate immunity is often considered primitive, there
is nothing primitive about its effectiveness, [Adam] Britton [biologist, northern Australia] said.
Britton called the antimicrobial peptides in alligator serum extremely effective agents
against bacteria. Remember that the first extremely effective antibiotics were also
found in a primitive organism  fungus. Design follows design,
not chaos. Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
Next headline on:Biomimetics 
Plants 
Terrestrial Zoology

Orchids: Epitome of Plant Evolution 04/28/2008
April 28, 2008  Orchids might be considered the epitome of plant
evolution, said David Roberts [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew] and Kingsley
Dixon [Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Australia] in a primer on orchids in
Current Biology.1 Yet some of the facts
they shared about these amazingly diverse and well-adapted plants are puzzling
for evolutionary theory.
First, the superlatives. The Orchidaceae comprise over
850 genera and 25,000 species, representing about 10% of the worlds flowering
plants and the largest family in species number. Darwin, who delighted
in the study of orchids and wrote a book on them in 1862, estimated that
the entire globe could be carpeted with orchids in three generations if all their
offspring lived. Orchids produce multitudes of tiny seeds that can drift long distances.
Their habitats are extremely varied. Some survive in deserts, many in the
tropics, and some without soil (epiphytes). Some no longer photosynthesize,
relying on their hosts for nutrients. One species even lives its
entire life underground.
Orchids maintain remarkable
symbioses with pollinators. Some reward their pollinators with
nectar; but, like fisherman, a third of species deceive pollinators with lures but no
reward. The article shows a picture of one species that has a structure on
its flower that looks like the female of a wasp. When the male lands on it,
a trigger flips him onto his back, dusting the flowers pistil
with the pollen he has collected. Orchids also have complex dependencies
on fungi and on other plants. The diversity of sizes, shapes, lifestyles and
relationships among this group of plants is remarkable.
Since the diversity in this plant group affords many opportunities
to study evolution, one might think a great deal is known about it. Roberts
and Dixon mentioned some difficulties, however:

Missing branch on the family tree: The relationship of the
Orchidaceae to other monocotyledons is poorly resolved,
they said. Monocots are one of the major groups of flowering plants.

The plant without a country: Equally confused is the geographical origin of the family.

Fossily paucity: To date the only unequivocal orchid fossil that has been found
is the recently described orchid pollinia on the back of a bee trapped in amber, said
to be 76-84 million years old  but that may be dated assumptions about when bees evolved.

The unfit: Orchids might be considered the epitome of plant evolution,
they said, but sadly they are among the most threatened of all flowering plants 
a puzzling predicament for organisms that one would think possess the epitome of fitness.

Profusion of confusion: The authors said that Numerous hypotheses have been put
forward to explain why orchids should have such high levels of deception.
This suggests that Darwinian theory provides no easy explanation of this phenomenon.

In short, While much still remains to be learnt within orchid biology,
there is now a mass of literature on their pollination biology and phylogenetic relationship,
they ended. This volume of literature does not necessarily track with evolutionary
explanatory power: However, much of this has been the description of patterns;
what is now needed are studies into the processes that drive diversification in this
most remarkable of flowering plant families. Sounds like what is needed
is work on the origin of species, if youll pardon Darwins
expression (that is, his facial one).
1. David L. Roberts and Kingsley W. Dixon, Primer: Orchids,
Current Biology,
Volume 18, Issue 8, 22 April 2008, pages R325-R329, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.026.

Much of the variation among these remarkably diverse
and complex plants fits with horizontal diversification  i.e., segregation
of existing information among populations that become more specialized. Some
of the variation is due to loss of function. The authors did not provide
any clear case of new genetic information arising from nowhere. What Darwin
needs to explain is the origin of orchids. That relationship to other plants,
they admitted, is poorly resolved. Equally unresolved is the
origin of a new kind of flowering plant. They are all still orchids.
Here was a natural testbed for evolutionary theory. Variation
within the kind is not the issue. Some of the theories behind the observed
variations (genetic drift, variable reproductive success, arms races leading to
exaggeration of characters, founder events) fit within microevolutionary change.
Darwin himself studied orchids with a passion after writing The Origin, and
called the origin of flowering plants an abominable mystery. Here
we are 146 years later with evolutionists still moaning there is much still remains to
be learnt. As far as observational science is concernt, Darwin has been
spurnt, and the court is now adjournt.
Next headline on:Plants 
Evolution 
Amazing Facts

Hobbit Prophecy: Somebody Will Take a Big Fall 04/27/2008
April 27, 2008  The men of muddle earth are wondering what to do with their
hobbit prisoners. Elizabeth Culotta wrote in Science about the ongoing debates among
paleoanthropologists about how to interpret the diminutive skeletons found in the
Liang Bua cave of Flores in Indonesia, affectionately dubbed hobbits.1
After four years of study (10/27/2004,
06/06/2006,
08/21/2006,
10/11/2006),
there is still no consensus on whether they were diseased modern
humans or some evolutionary side branch of hominids from Africa.
Paleoanthropologists meeting in Columbus, Ohio earlier this month got their
first views of the LB1 skeleton. William Jungers of State University of New York at
Stony Brook claimed the creature had a slow gait, due to abnormalities with its feet.
He believes the hobbit provides a window into the primitive bipedal foot of
australopithecines. For that to be true, Leslie Aiello of New York City countered,
it would have had to remain unchanged for a long time. How it got there
and managed to persist--thats clearly a challenge to explain. Others
said there is no evidence for a migration like that. To invent such a story is
clearly a case of special pleading.
In short, no consensus has emerged about these small humans.
Given the wildly diverging opinions on the hobbit, Culotta ended,
Somebodys going to take a big fall here. She was quoting paleoanthropologist
C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University in Ohio. Maybe the fall will
become evident by fall (autumn, that is). Another research team will be excavating the cave
this summer.
1. Elizabeth Culotta, When Hobbits (Slowly) Walked the Earth,
Science,
25 April 2008: Vol. 320. no. 5875, pp. 433-435, DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5875.433.

Evolutionists would love to have another case of
chimps becoming humans here. The early hopes have not materialized.
Our prediction: the skeletons will be shown to be human. Wait and see.
Theyll find a fingernail-sized cell phone or something.
Next headline on:Early Man 
Fossils

Inferences from Old Protein 04/26/2008
April 26, 2008  The dinosaur leg bone with the soft tissue was back in the news. Back in
2005 (03/24/2005), a femur from a T. rex broke open
during transport and was found to contain pliable tissue and blood vessels with apparent
red blood cells. This was a phenomenon, once thought impossible for such
tissues to have survived for 68 million years. In 2007, the team of Mary Schweitzer
announced the presence of collagen in the dinosaur and in a mastodon bone
(04/12/2007).
A short update on the story was printed in Science.1
This paper said nothing about the sensation of finding soft tissue in old fossils.
The focus was almost entirely on evolution.
The team from North Carolina State, Harvard and other institutions
sequenced the collagen from both the dinosaur and the mastodon. Finding
evolution was their goal: It was clearly the purpose of the
research: We performed phylogenetic analyses to infer the evolutionary relationships
of the dinosaur and mammal. Despite missing
sequence data, they said, the mastodon groups with elephant and the T. rex
groups with birds, consistent with predictions based on genetic and morphological data
for mastodon and on morphological data for T. rex.. They concluded
that molecular data from long-extinct organisms may have the potential for
resolving relationships at critical areas in the vertebrate evolutionary tree that
have, so far, been phylogenetically intractable.
The original paper only admitted to consistent data, therefore, and
also admitted that many evolutionary relationships among vertebrates have been
intractable. But the statement that The results extend our knowledge of
trait evolution within nonavian dinosaurs into the macromolecular level of biological
organization was all the news media needed to promote Darwin.
Live Science
trumpeted, Gunk in T. Rex Fossil Confirms Dino-Bird Lineage. Ditto for
Science Daily.
For a contrasting view, see what David Tyler wrote on
Access
Research Network.

We read the fine print, not the bold headlines.
If you dont mind a wading expedition through muddy jargon, you will
no doubt notice how much fudging and guesswork goes into these kinds of analyses:

Bayesian, likelihood, parsimony, and distance methods were used to generate
evolutionary trees. In the Bayesian analysis, the posterior distribution of
trees reconstructed all extant groups in generally agreed-upon relationships
(the posterior probability of clades ranged from 0.80 to 1.00), with the exception
of green anole (A. carolinensis), which is inferred here to lie at
the base of amniotes instead of grouping as the sister taxon to alligator and
birds (archosaurs) (Fig. 1). LC/MS/MS from tryptic digests produces fragmentary
protein sequence data; however, we found unequivocal support (posterior
probability of 1.00) uniting mastodon with elephant as members of Elephantinae,
which together group with tenrec (E. telfairi) as members of the mammalian
group Afrotheria. Maximum likelihood produces the same groupings,
although with less support (approximate likelihood ratio test; aLRT = 0.855
for Elephantinae and 0.872 for Afrotheria). Maximum parsimony analysis also
groups mastodon, elephant, and tenrec together (fig. S1, B to D). For the
T. rex sample, we used five peptide sequences from collagen {alpha}1(I)
and one from collagen {alpha}2(I) for a total of 89 amino acids (Fig. 1).
The T. rex clusters within the Archosauria (posterior probability of 0.92),
more closely related to birds (chicken and ostrich, 0.9) than alligator, although
a lack of informative sites in the ostrich and T. rex leaves Dinosauria
unresolved. The likelihood tree is identical to the Bayesian tree, except
for higher support at these locations in the tree (aLRT = 0.969 for Archosauria
and 0.907 for Dinosauria). Branch lengths (expected rates of change per site)
indicate a relatively stable and uniform rate of evolution, lacking evidence for a
deviation from a molecular clock. Maximum parsimony analysis also groups the
T. rex with the chicken and ostrich, although bootstrap support is low (fig. S1,
B to D). Neighbor joining groups the T. rex with the birds, but
miscalculates the branching order and misplaces alligator, mastodon, and
several extant organisms (fig. S1, B to D).

If a group of scientists sets out to find Darwin in the trees, with funding from the NIH, NSF and
two private foundations, is it any wonder they find him? Doubtless the funding might dry up
if they came back saying, Sorry, all we found was intelligent design.
It may be worthwhile to recall that phylogenetic algorithms are subject to many problems.
Bayesian analysis, for instance, is a garbage-in, garbage-out method that is not without
serious epistemological issues (02/05/2004 bullet 4,
10/01/2005). Using D for Darwin and G for Garbage,
we propose three new acronyms in addition to the famous GIGO (garbage in, garbage out):

DIDO: Evolutionary reasoning, from assumption to conclusion.

GIDO: The belief that Darwins mind arose from chaos.

DIGO: How creationists view evolutionary inference.
It is clear that the team gravitated to the methods that supported their preconceived
notions about evolutionary ancestry. Even the three most concordant results,
however, left important relationships unresolved, and placed dinosaurs closer to
chickens than to other reptiles (alligators, anole lizards, and perhaps other dinosaurs).
How well does that confirm evolution? Readers may wish to review earlier entries about problems with
tree-building algorithms (03/19/2007,
11/26/2002,
06/13/2003,
11/14/2005,
01/26/2008,
and 07/25/2002).
Aside from the fact that
even strict creationists would expect to find many similarities in proteins used for similar
functions, this paper strained at the gnat of similarity between 89 amino acids in
one protein, using it to make sweeping generalizations about
evolution, while swallowing the camel of the problem of soft tissue preservation. When a
person tries to hide a camel by swallowing it, however, it is hard for
alert bystanders not to notice.

Complex Ankle Puts Bounce in Your Step 04/25/2008
April 25, 2008  The ankle is incredibly efficient at working so the
amount of energy you burn with the ankle is much lower than what would be
predicted with just isolated muscle studies. Thats what kinesiologist
Daniel Ferris (U of Michigan) said in an article on
Science Daily.
His team measured the efficiency of the muscles and tendons of the ankle by
designing a prosthetic boot containing a bionic ankle,
connected to the nervous system with electrodes.
The Achilles tendon is able to store and release energy at just the
right rates for both walking and sprinting. Scientists have helped amputees
with prosthetic devices that can work for one or the other, but only the real ankle
is optimized for both. During walking, the article said, the muscle and
tendon act like a catapult to put a spring in your step  delivering about
three times the energy that could be stored in an isolated muscle.

Does anyone see Darwin in this picture?
The article had no use for that hypothesis. These scientists approached
the human foot and ankle as if it were engineered, and advanced science
accordingly. Ferris is in a Department of Biomedical Engineering.
How would one even begin an evolutionary study of the human foot? How many
lucky mutations would it take to get this incredibly efficient
system by accident? Dont expect adding a few more millions of years
into the mix to help.
Most of the real footwork in science is done with a presumption
of intelligent design. When mentioned at all, evolution is merely an
afterthought in such studies. The scientists might say something like,
Isnt it amazing what evolution produced. Bosh; this was
a design study from start to finish. Give credit where it is due.
Intelligent Design promises much more productive knowledge and discovery than
evolutionary theory ever did. Junk the just-so stories and lets race to
understand design in nature, because its not just apparent; its real.
Next headline on:Human Body 
Intelligent Design 
Amazing Facts

The universe as revealed by modern astronomical
instruments indicates dynamic processes that appear to have taken long periods of
time. This may be a challenge to Biblical creationists. What do the
images mean? We should keep in mind several caveats of interpretation.
As with any piece of scientific evidence, the data are on the surface of the earth in the present.
The photons from these sources are gathered up in real time by telescopes here on the earth. The
human mind projects realities out in space based on a combination of
facts, assumptions and interpretations. Just as photons are focused and magnified
by a telescope lens, the resultant galaxies we think we understand are scientific
objects that are filtered through the theoretical lens of what finite humans perceive them to be.
Recall that, just last week, the Galex telescope revealed arcs of hydrogen far beyond the
visible arms of galaxy M83 (04/21/2008). Those invisible
parts, which surprised the discoverers, now become part of the new reification of the
term galaxy. There are other invisible parts astronomers speak of,
such as dark matter and dark energy. In addition, astronomers maintain a host
of assumptions about the processes that brought these objects into their current
form. The press release speaks of astronomers watching stars being born, when
actually, all they are seeing is light in the present. No man could ever watch
the whole process of star birth. Observations of stars are taken to represent
stages in theoretical models. It becomes difficult to see where observation ends and theory begins.
A feel for how difficult is apparent when one considers that
the assumptions and interpretations about which early 20th century astronomers felt confident
changed dramatically since Edwin Hubble first wrote his epochal papers on the nature of
the spiral nebulae he observed in the 1920s.

The word galaxy itself reveals the historical character of
scientific interpretation. From the Latin root for milk, galaxy prior to 1923
meant The Milky Way  The Galaxy, which at the time was assumed to
constitute the entire universe. By extension, galaxies means
Milky Ways since after Hubble, astronomers reinterpreted the spiral nebulae
to be comparable scientific objects to the Milky Way, but far beyond it.
Some called them island universes (a logical contradiction, since there can
only be one uni-verse).

Subsequent revolutions in the interpretation of galaxies  some of them profound
 have occurred up to the
present day. What confidence can we have, therefore, that
our current conceptualization of these scientific objects is accurate or complete now?
All this is to caution that a scientific object should be understood,
therefore, as a mixture of raw data, assumption and interpretation.
None of the above should cast doubt on the reality of what the Hubble Telescope
has revealed. Creationists as well as evolutionists tend to be scientific
realists; they understand our empirical evidence to correspond to objective
reality. Galaxies are real; they have a history. It is the ability
of the human mind to fully grasp and understand them that should be questioned.
If the creation of the universe involved one-time, special circumstances (God
stretched out the heavens  04/18/2008
commentary) any attempts to understand them using
natural laws and processes is doomed. This would be a good time
to re-read the 05/11/2006 entry that
addressed the question, Is our universe natural?

Notice that three of the entries in the catalog have Arp numbers. These were
discovered by astronomer Halton Arp, whose story is instructive about consensus
science. Arp was arguably one of the best astronomical observers in the 20th
century. His Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies documented dozens of
colliding galaxies, some of which the HST has now revealed in color at higher resolution.
Halton Arp used some cases as evidence that redshifts cannot be reliable indicators
of distance.
Since Arp challenged the Big Bang consensus,
he was considered a maverick and was not welcome in some astronomical circles. He was even denied
telescope time to continue his research. Many historians of science have
considered the treatment he got from his peers as a reprehensible abridgement of the scientific
values of openness and honest debate. Some use it as an example of how
normal science treats anomalies and marginalizes those outside the
paradigm.

All that is preface to some possible interpretations of
cosmological history that the creationist can reconcile with a
Biblical worldview. Some of these allow for vast ages to have occurred in
the galactic context: e.g., a pre-hexameron creation of the universe (Schroeder,
Gray), rapid structure formation with plasma physics and zero-point energy
(Setterfield), time dilation due to general relativity (Humphreys), or local time
zone solutions  i.e., the stars were created on the fourth day
Earth Local Time (Lisle). Videos that discuss the last two
options can be found at Answers in Genesis.
None of these options is without problems and detractors. That AIG would promote at least two
interpretations such as these, however, is evidence that the strictest young-earth creationists
can handle issues of apparent age that come to attention when pondering the Hubble
images.
Any world view, whether secular or religious, will have challenges and
problems when looking out at the universe. The old triumphalist, progressivist
vision of science marching onward to Truth must be set aside in this post-Kuhn,
post-Quine world. Let us all view the Hubble catalog of colliding galaxies
with fresh awe and rational reflection toward improving our understanding of
cosmology (so far as is humanly possible) with integrity, openness and humility.
Next headline on:Astronomy 
Cosmology 
Dating Methods 
Physics

Darwinist attempts to keep creationism and
intelligent design expelled have been dictatorial long before
Ben Steins film.
See, for instance, war stories two years ago from 04/21/2006
and 04/03/2006.
Some students, however, show signs of restlessness even if they get bad marx for it.
Has the pro-literate uprising begun? See The Class Struggle from
04/05/2006.

Fairness: Science
Daily reported on work by UCLA psychologists that suggest humans are hardwired
for fairness. A sense of contempt arises when games appear
rigged unfairly, they found. The psychologists found a particular region of
the brain was activated during this response, but a different region when the subject
was uplifted by seeing fair treatment. The study found these emotional firings
occur in brain structures that are fast and automatic, so it appears that the
emotional brain is overruling the more deliberate, rational mind,
the article said. Faced with a conflict, the brains default position
is to demand a fair deal.

Hierarchy: Another
Science Daily
article claimed humans are hardwired for hierarchy. Humans have a
pecking order, and the brain responds to changes in social status,
scientists at the National Institutes of Health concluded. Again, the study
involved putting subjects into artificial game situations and watching brain firing
patterns. One researcher said, The processing of hierarchical information
seems to be hard-wired, occurring even outside of an explicitly competitive environment,
underscoring how important it is for us.

Neither study mentioned evolution. It appeared, however, that the researchers
were attempting to reduce human thoughts and behaviors to neural episodes in the
physical brain that act autonomously and automatically  i.e., determinism
instead of free will.

Theres no question that human beings, as
rational animals have numerous mind-body connections. Fear makes
the adrenal glands secrete adrenaline, and we breathe faster and run harder.
Happiness makes us laugh and feel the rush of endorphins. The sight of food
makes us salivate. We can use our minds to study minds, just like we can use
our eyes to study eyes. There is no way, though, for research like this to
argue for determinism over free will.
To show that determinism cannot be proved by rational means, invert
the argument. Ask a scientist to disprove the thesis that she is hardwired to
do science. When she does science, you can say, certain parts of the brain
light up on the screen. Perhaps her research was predetermined by the social
network in which she found herself. Choosing a science career lit up the
attractive impulse of becoming elevated in the pecking order. Making certain
inferences and scientific conclusions produced a pleasurable sensation in her ventral striatum.
If she agrees thus far, ask her how she could possibly know
any of the above to be true, outside her brains hardwired propensities.
Sounds like a fair question.
Next headline on:Human Body 
Politics and Ethics 
Theology

Evolution Revealed? 04/22/2008
April 22, 2008  When the news reports evidence for evolution in the fossils
or genes, it sounds like Darwinism has been all but proved, because scientists
have observed its effects. Can these stories withstand deeper scrutiny?

Lungless frog: Science
Daily reported a frog without lungs in Borneo. Lunglessness in tetrapods has
been reported in salamanders and other amphibians, but this was the first frog found
without functioning lungs. Apparently the frog gets its needed oxygen through
its skin. National
Geographic News has a video clip of the unusual frog.
David Tyler at
Access
Research Network wrote about the implications for evolution, as did Carl Wieland
for Creation Ministries International.

Legged snake: The
BBC
News reported a fossil snake possessing two legs. The 2-cm long limbs, possessing
tibia and fibula, were apparently non-functional.
Answers
in Genesis commented on the implications for creation vs evolution. The response
included links to their earlier articles from
2006 and
2000
about snake fossils with rudimentary legs.

Tapired eleph-hippo:
National
Geographic News said that the ancestor to the elephant was like a tapir that lived
in the water like a hippopotamus. The interpretation was based on teeth of a fossil
named Moeritherium that they say lived 37 million years ago. It seems to have
lacked a trunk but may have had a prehensile upper lip, the article states (again,
based on the teeth alone). The article was accompanied by artwork of a cross between
a tapir and a hippo.
The fossil was found in Egypt in what was interpreted as a swampy
area, But it was difficult for scientists to tell whether the ancient animals
had actually lived in such an environment or whether their bodies had washed up there
after their deaths. One scientist doubted the interpretation. He thinks
Moeritherium was a unique, specialized animal. He cautioned against assuming
an aquatic ancestry for modern elephants or even suggesting that all early proboscideans were aquatic.
He questioned the popular myth that the elephant evolved a trunk by using its
nose like a snorkel (see 11/07/2002).
That would involve a terrestrial mammal evolving into an aquatic animal, then re-adapting to
to the terrestrial environment inhabited by modern elephants.

Charles Darwin expected the fossil record and discoveries of organisms in exotic
environments to be filled in with the transitional forms his theory predicted.
Do these latest examples qualify as evidence? Incidentally, the first draft
of Darwins Origin of Species just went online, reported the
BBC News.
The free
Darwin online website
(click here for latest additions)
includes mountains of his papers, notes and experiments,
for those wishing to explore the ideas of the man who
changed our understanding of nature.

Many extinct animals are known from fossils. As far as we can tell, they were
well adapted to their particular habitats and were not evolving into something else. Among
living animals, some oddballs are found, like the lungless frog or blind cave fish 
but these indicate loss of function, not upward-and-onward evolution.
How justifiable is it to piece them into ancestral trees after the fact?
The sociopolitical and rhetorical aspects of such interpretations cannot be ignored.
The few fossils evolutionists point to for confirmation of Darwins evolutionary
tree are either unrelated, degenerative, questionable, subject to alternative
explanations, fragmentary, figmentary, dubious, specious, facetious, hoaxious, or noxious
examples of the habit of reifying imagination. Where are the billions of missing links
Darwin expected?
Only in the dreams of artists who illustrate high school textbooks.
Charlie didnt change our understanding of nature; he changed certain gullible
disciples perception of reality, natural or not. The many counter-examples
and falsifications get underreported in the press. Evolution revealed?
No; evolution re-veiled.
Next headline on:Evolution 
Fossils 
Mammals 
Terrestrial Zoology

Fred Reed on circling
the paradigmprotecting Darwinism at all cost (funny but logical).

Findings vs Surmisings in Astronomy 04/21/2008
April 21, 2008  The Galex satellite (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) found bright
features with an ultraviolet glow in the outskirts of a spiral galaxy, reported the
BBC News.
What are they? Scientists think they are large clusters of stars.
How much is known, and how much is interpreted?
The region imaged is the dark area around spiral galaxy M83 in the constellation Hydra.
Symmetrical arms of glowing hydrogen appear in the periphery of the more familiar
central spiral. If these are starry regions, the discovery is surprising:
The finding has surprised astronomers because the galactic periphery was assumed
to lack high concentrations of ingredients needed to form stars.
Each pixel in the Galex image would have to contain hundreds of thousands of
stars. It is impossible, therefore, for Galex to actually resolve them.
The Galex researchers compared their image with radio telescope data from the Very Large
Array in New Mexico. Did the VLA find the elusive stars?

Light emitted in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum can be used to
locate gaseous hydrogen atoms. These are seen as a good sign that the molecular
form of the gas is also present. And it is from this molecular gas that stars are born.
When the astronomers combined the radio and the Galex data, they found that they matched up.
Clearly, the basic ingredients for star formation are
out in those regions, said Dr [Mark] Seibert
[Carnegie Observatories].

The radio telescope did not resolve stars, either. The leap from glowing gas
to large clusters of stars was bridged by theory. From there, another leap
into cosmology was made, but this time it was labeled a speculation:

The astronomers speculate that the young stars seen in far-flung regions
of M83 could have formed under conditions resembling those of the early Universe,
a time when space was not yet enriched with dust and heavier elements.But this process is not well understood.

Despite the disclaimer, the above paragraph still claimed the stars were seen when,
in actuality, the radio and UV instruments merely showed the presence of atomic hydrogen gas,
from which they assumed molecular gas was present, from which they assumed stars would
form, even though regions of this low density were not expected to have stars.
The Galex satellite is operated by JPL and Caltech.
The original press release is on the Galex
home page.

Maybe there are stars there. These astronomers
did little to ground their interpretations in empirical data. Not a single star
was observed in this gas, yet we are supposed to believe there are hundreds of thousands
of them in each pixel? Are we supposed to respect a pure speculation about the
early universe resting on the admission that this process is not well understood?
Try that with gnome theory. We did not find any gnomes, but we think we found some
gas they emit. We didnt expect to find that gas in the desert. It
might shed light, however, on how gnomes arose on the early earth, before the land
was enriched with toadstools.
If a scientist is not sure of something, let him say so or keep his
speculations to himself. Todays scientists often do a very poor job
of discriminating between observation and interpretation. News reporters
shift between them seamlessly and shamelessly. It is up to the reader, and
to sites like this, to sift the shift and lift the fogma.
Next headline on:Astronomy 
Cosmology

Findings vs Surmisings in Evolutionary Biology 04/20/2008
April 20, 2008  What part of the following story is a finding, and what is a
supposition? Science
Daily told about work by Julie Baker (Stanford) and a graduate student who set out
to discover the evolutionary origin of the mammalian placenta. They evaluated
differences between placentas and eggs of a number of different animals, and told
stories about how they came to be  but the article spoke of all the above as
findings.
Consider, for instance, the paragraphs right before the statement that
refers to them as these findings:

They found that the placenta develops in two distinct stages. In the
first stage, which runs from the beginning of pregnancy through mid-gestation, the
placental cells primarily activate genes that mammals have in common with birds and
reptiles. This suggests that the placenta initially evolved through
repurposing genes the early mammals inherited from their immediate
ancestors when they arose more than 120 million years ago.
In the second stage, cells of the mammalian placenta switch to a
new wave of species-specific genes. Mice activate newly evolved mouse
genes and humans activate human genes.
It makes sense that each animal would need a
different set of genes, Baker said. A pregnant orca has different needs
than a mouse and so they had to come up with different hormonal solutions to
solve their problems, she said. For example, an elephants
placenta nourishes a single animal for 660 days. A pregnant mouse gestates
an average of 12 offspring for 20 days. Clearly, those two pregnancies would
require very different placentas.

The shift between descriptions of observable organs in living animals and evolutionary stories about
their relationships is seamless. Clearly Baker never watched one animals
placenta evolve into another type of placenta. She also spoke in Lamarckian
terms, suggesting that an animals need was sufficient to produce the effect.
Yet all the research was labeled as findings.
Charles Q. Choi on Live
Science took the evolution angle further. He said the placenta is rather
reptilian in its ancestry, new research suggests. He also used
the word findings for suppositions: These findings suggest the
placenta initially evolved when early mammals found new uses for genes
they inherited from their reptile-like ancestors. Yet he admitted
repeatedly that much remains unknown, and had just quoted Baker saying,
The placenta is this amazing, complex structure and its unique to
mammals, but weve had no idea what its evolutionary origins are.
He himself said in the opening paragraph, Scientists have no clue, either, at least
insofar as evolution is concerned. How cluelessness can be called a finding
was left unexplained. Yet in spite of the admitted ignorance, Choi did not hesitate to title his entry,
Gooey origin of human placenta revealed.

Baker found living, functional, designed placentas
that meet the needs of each animal perfectly. She did not find
evolution. She did not find anything about evolution. Instead, she lost
something: common sense.
Evolutionists get away with murder. They
murder rationality in their mythoids but no science reporter takes them to court.
Except here. Repurposing genes  did you catch that little infraction?
Next headline on:Evolution 
Mammals

Nature Topples ID Straw Man 04/19/2008
April 19, 2008  Its easier to knock down a straw
man than a strong man. Maybe that explains the human tendency to fantasize
about victory over ones enemies. In scientific journals, however, one would
expect to deal in facts and to realistically portray adversarial positions. Even
better would be to let the adversary respond. Nature, however, in its
latest issue, did neither. Matthew Bennett and Jeff Hasty mentioned intelligent
design just enough to discredit it.1
The two scientists from the Department of Bioengineering and Institute for Nonlinear Science
at the University of California in San Diego were reviewing an experiment in the same
issue where a team of European geneticists rewired a genetic network to
see what would happen.2 In other words, they made certain proteins
interact that normally did not. Fortunately for the E. coli subjects,
they survived, and some even did better under artificial selection pressures.
It suggested the possibility that organisms can evolve by changing the
architecture of their genetic network,
though no new structures, functions or organelles emerged from the experiment.
What does this mean for the idea that cells are intelligently designed?
Bennett and Hasty said,

This conclusion also flies in the face of the popular misconception among opponents of the evolutionary theory, who believe that the genetic code is irreducibly complex. For instance, advocates of intelligent design compare the genome to modern engineered machines such as integrated circuits and clocks, which will cease to function if their internal design is altered. Although sometimes it is instructive to point to similarities between the design principles behind modern technology and those behind genetics, the analogy can only go so far. Engineered devices are generally designed to work just above the point of failure, so that any tampering with their construction will result in catastrophe. In the event of failure, new clocks can be purchased or central processing units replaced. But nature does not have that option. To survive  and so evolve  organisms must be able to tolerate random mutations, deletions and recombination events. And Isalan and colleagues work provides an important step forward in quantifying just how robust the genetic code can be.

Intelligent design literature does not claim that everything in biology, including the
genetic code, is irreducibly complex. ID scientists already know that mutations
occur frequently yet organisms survive. They claim that the genetic system contains complex specified
information that could not have arisen by natural processes. Irreducible
complexity is reserved for molecular machines, like the flagellum, that cease to function
when parts are removed. The genome, everyone knows, survives in spite of mutations
because of quality control mechanisms, backups and repair mechanisms that exhibit
design. In fact, they have noted that robustness against mutations is a good strategy
that exhibits another level of design above just the information in the genetic code.
1. Matthew R. Bennett and Jeff Hasty, Systems biology: Genome rewired,
Nature
452, 824-825 (17 April 2008) | doi:10.1038/452824a.
2. Isalan et al, Evolvability and hierarchy in rewired bacterial gene networks,
Nature
452, 840-845 (17 April 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature06847.

Why doesnt Nature ever let ID scientists
speak for themselves? Why do they rarely let an ID scientist respond to a claim
made against them? (and when they do, only in highly edited fashion). These
scientists did not see anything evolve. No new genetic information arose without
their interference. They did some artificial selection experiments under artificial
conditions and watched the robust organisms survive. Did any functional genetic
information arise naturally? No. Did they show that the mutated organisms
would survive better in the wild? No. This is not evolution; it is
semi-intelligent tinkering with nature.
Bennett and Hasty hastened to another fallacy: the phrase to survive
 and so evolve commits a non-sequitur.
You might survive a world war by the skin or your teeth, but you would be exactly the same individual
as before, broken bones, scars and all. Survival is not evolution. Evolution
requires generating novel genetic information that produces new structures, functions,
organs and senses  like eyes, wings, sonar, and all the things that mammals have
that E. coli did not.
Next time, Nature, let your adversaries define their own positions.
Its interesting that critics of ID complain that it is not science because it is
not testable  then they go and claim it has been tested and found false.
They cant have it both ways.
Next headline on:Evolutionary Theory 
Intelligent Design 
Genetics

Is Inflation Theory in Trouble? 04/18/2008
April 18, 2008  For more than a quarter of a century, inflation
has been viewed as the savior of the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang was in
trouble in the late 1970s because of the flatness problem and the horizon problem:
our universe appeared to be too homogeneous and isotropic to be an accident. If
a runaway inflation occurred within the first second of the expansion, cosmologist
Alan Guth calculated, it would even out any differences and produce the nearly-uniform
universe we all know and love. It seemed an elegant, simple solution.
Many argued in the meantime that inflation was untestable.
Some said it was an ad hoc rescuing device to save a theory in trouble.
Nevertheless, Guth and others have claimed that it has passed every test thrown
at it (02/21/2005). Astronomers have pretty much incorporated one of the varieties of inflation
into the standard model. This week in News at
Nature, however, a study was reported that doesnt need cosmic inflation.

Could the Big Bang have come not at the beginning of the universe, but after a long, slow period of shrinkage?
Thats one theory bolstered by a new analysis of the Big Bangs afterglow, which shows that the early universe did not inflate with the smoothness that many theorists expected.
The standard, canonical models will be ruled out if this holds, says Amit Yadav, an astronomer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The simplicity is gone.

Theres a lot at stake in the result, the article states: it could
also lead to a radical reinterpretation of what the Big Bang was and whether it
marked the universes beginning.
On another campus, a different study is calling inflation into
doubt. According to
Science
Daily, Lawrence Krauss at Case Western Reserve University failed to find the
expected noise pattern in the cosmic background radiation expected from inflation
theory. The article, in passing, questions the testability of inflation:

Inflation theory arose in the 1980s as a means to explain some features of the universe that had previously baffled astronomers such as why the universe is so close to being flat and why it is so uniform. Today, inflation remains the
best way to theoretically understand many aspects of the early universe, but most of its predictions are sufficiently malleable that consistency with observation cannot be considered unambiguous confirmation.

The team claims the polarization pattern that had been used by inflationists as confirmation could be
produced by a different mechanism.

If the universe is older and more complex than a
recent inflationary Big Bang, other questions arise. According to the Second
Law of Thermodynamics, the universe cannot be infinitely old. It would have
gone to its heat death infinitely long ago.
The only solution appears to be a controlled expansion done by
intelligent design. Enter the Bible, that claims a dozen times that God
stretched out the heavens. That fits not only the expansion evidence, but
the fine-tuning as well. Materialists are left totally baffled trying to
account for these observations without design.
Next headline on:Cosmology 
Intelligent Design

Imagination as Science 04/17/2008
April 17, 2008  Can a science exist without evidence? Astrobiology, and
its subcategory the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, involve a
great deal of scientific equipment, trained researchers, and funding, but still have
no observational evidence to support their reason for being: extraterrestrial life.
Where is the line between imagination and reality in these fields?
Some insight into the answer can be gained by looking at reports
about the activities and beliefs of those involved. At
Astrobiology
Magazine, a news feature of NASAs Astrobiology Institute, reporter
John D. Ruley spoke about the conclusions of Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia
about alien intelligence. Watson, who was strongly influenced by James Lovelock
and the Gaia Hypothesis, has come up with a rather pessimistic model of
the evolution of intelligence. He
concludes intelligence will be rare in the universe. Since we have no examples of
intelligence on other planets, how could he present this as a scientific claim?
Watson employed mathematics. Since mathematics is ostensibly
the language of science, that would seem to lend some
scientific credibility to his work. But if the assumptions behind his numbers
are no more credible than the speculations of a teen-ager on spring break,
can the result be any more trustworthy? Watson first assumed the lifetime of
likely stars with habitable zones, then assigned probabilities to four
major evolutionary transitions:

Applying the limited lifespan to a stepwise model, Watson finds that approximately
four major evolutionary steps were required before an intelligent civilization could
develop on Earth. These steps included the emergence of single celled life
about half a billion years after the Earth was formed, multicellular life about
a billion and a half years later, specialized cells allowing complex life forms
with functional organs a billion years after that, and human language a billion
years later still.
Several of these steps agree with major transitions that have been observed in the
archeological [sic] record.

Each of these assume evolution and its geological timeline. Moreover, it could
be that he omitted many other factors that should have been included in the equation, each with its own
speculative probabilities. When multiplying unknowns together, the error bars
multiply accordingly. The relationships between each factor must also be taken into
account, and these are unknown. The bottom line, therefore, can be so error-prone as to be meaningless.
The article, nonetheless, made it sound like Watsons conclusions are more scientific because of
the use of mathematics:

The mathematical methods Watson used assume that each evolutionary
step is independent of the others, though they must occur in sequence.
Watson considers this a reasonable first approximation for what is,
after all, a very idealized sort of model, deliberately simplified
enough that the math can be solved analytically.

The words solved analytically seem to lend a false credibility to the exercise.
Does a speculation admittedly this simplistic deserve the time of day? The
BBC News science
page thought so. Seth Shostak of the
SETI Institute said, however, there is no way to prove it true. He did think there is a
way to prove it false: to do the experiment by detecting signals from
alien civilizations (i.e., SETI). But SETI is another science with
zero evidence.
Those who write for the Space.com
SETI Thursday report are courageous, though, in the face of this
lack of data. Douglas Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition
for the SETI Institute was at it again this month
(cf. 03/17/2007)
preparing civilization for contact with whomever. As the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) enters a new phase, with the recent start of
observations for radio signals from other worlds with the SETI Institutes
Allen Telescope Array, the international scientific community has begun preparing
all the more earnestly for the cascade of events that would follow the
detection of an alien civilization. But the presence of instruments
carries no promise of success. Compare the Allen Array with a multimillion dollar
array of bigfoot detectors, for instance. It might enjoy great success videotaping
squirrels and pine trees, just as the radio telescopes may detect pulsars and gamma-ray
bursts. But unless and until its prime target is detected,
its grip on science is tenuous at best.
Vakoch left himself an out:

But even if we never make contact with another world, the process of preparing
for contact may help us become better, more integrated humans. By reflecting on
how we would portray ourselves to other worlds, we also have an opportunity to grow in
our own self-understanding. And part of that increased self-understanding can
come about through a recognition of those aspects of ourselves that we would rather
not be true, but that are a part of ourselves.

This sounds strangely like a psychoanalytic session than a science experiment.
Indeed, Vakoch pointed to Carl Jung for inspiration: Unfortunately, there can be
no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be.
A number of questions get begged here. Jung, largely discredited as a scientist today,
built a whole model of dreams and archetypes after he split with Freud (another
discredited scientist). Be that as it may, how does Vakoch, or Jung, define good,
better, or understanding? With what scientific instruments would they measure
these things? How does Vakoch even know that a more integrated human
is better than a disintegrated one?
The employment of non-scientific language continued right through the
end of the article. By this time it sounded more like an inspirational desideratum
than an entry for a science news website:

In a sense, the composition of messages to other worlds becomes a process
not merely of being in touch with alien worlds beyond, but of unknown worlds
within. And such an exploration into our souls requires as much
fortitude as does building and sustaining telescopes that will search the stars
for decades and centuries, seeking evidence of life beyond Earth. As we look
within, lets not forget to look at those parts of ourselves that we
would rather look away from. As Jung reminded us, no one can
become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.
To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality
as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.

Even Eugenie Scott recognized that the oughts and shoulds
belong to moral philosophy, not science (04/14/2008,
bullet 3). Why should Carl Jung have been given
prominence here, instead of Billy Graham? What qualitative or quantitative
difference puts the observation-free speculations of a SETI Institute person into
a scientific category different from those of anyone else? Should a variety of theologians
and philosophers get equal time at Space.coms SETI Thursday pulpit?

We hope it was apparent that there is no justification
for the SETI and Astrobiology folk to call what they do science. They deserve
no more respect than a Raelian. Their use of mathematics and scientific instruments
is an irrelevant distraction: no evidence equates to no science.
Progress will be made only when science reporters get the courage
to nail the mythmakers with the hard questions they typically ask politicians.
Here are some suggestions: How can you say that? How do you know that?
Dr. Vakoch, a lot of critics would argue that your views have no scientific merit,
and that you are making up stories out of your own imagination. How would
you respond to them? If he gives the typical smug elitist answer that he is doing
science, not
religion, keep pounding away. Dr. Vakoch, which definition of science are
you using? Do you follow Bacon, Buffon, Herschel, Whewell, Mill, Popper, Quine,
von Fraasen, Laudan, Feyerabend, Foucault, Kuhn, Cartwright, etc. whose views
contradict one another? Are you a rationalist or an empiricist?
Does the use of scientific instruments and mathematics make something scientific?
Where is your evidence? How do you define what is good or moral? Why did you
pick Carl Jung over other experts? Wasnt he a spiritualist who claimed
to have a demonic spirit guide? (source)
Shove the microphone to his face after this barrage, and make sure the camera gets
a good shot of the flushed expression. It will look lovely on the front page
of the New York Times under the headline, Charlatan Exposed.
Next headline on:SETI 
Evolution

Struggles for equity: trying to pass the Academic Bill of Rights in 2005, from
04/13/2005. Guess who opposes it.

Darwin and Hitler: A Trumped-Up Connection? 04/16/2008
April 16, 2008  If there is anything critics of Ben Steins documentary
Expelled are griping about, it is the
association of Hitler with Darwin. What is the movie claiming and not claiming,
and how solid is the historical connection?Scientific
American, in particular, loathed the implication that Darwinism has anything to
do with the Holocaust (but see rebuttal on
Evolution
News). The
American Thinker was a little sympathetic, but still asked whether the
imagery of Dachau and Hademar begs [the] question of the ontological connection
between Darwinism and Nazism
In response, historian Richard Weikart, PhD at UC Stanislaus,
wrote an article for the The
American Spectator to clarify the relationship between Darwin and the Nazis.
He acknowledges that todays Darwinists are not Nazisfar from it.
Nevertheless, he listed six principles embedded in Darwins world view that
cheapen the value of human life:

Humans are animals.

There is no soul.

Morality is relative.

Humans are unequal.

Nature is a struggle for existence.

Death is an engine of progress.

These principles were imbibed wholeheartedly by German scientists
and philosophers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
They, in turn, strongly influenced Hitler. In addition, Weikart, author of
From Darwin to Hitler, showed how todays staunch Darwinists believe
the same principles. Todays Darwinists are not Nazis and not all
Darwinists agree with Dawkins, Wilson, Ruse, Singer, or Watson, he ended.
However, some of the ideas being promoted today by prominent Darwinists in the
name of Darwinism have an eerily similar ring to the ideologies that eroded respect
for human life in the pre-Nazi era.
Dennis Prager interviewed Ben Stein on his radio program Tuesday.
In the interview, which can be heard on
DennisPrager.com (34 minutes), Prager made a similar point.
He stated emphatically that neither
he, Ben Stein, nor the film are claiming that Darwinists are Nazi sympathizers or that
Darwinism produced the Holocaust. The point made by Expelled was that
the Darwinian world view facilitated the devaluation of human life  and that
Nazis pointed to Darwinism as a scientific justification for their views. That,
Prager said, is a fact of history acknowledged by all historians.
A great deal of misinformation about this film has been circulating.
Chuck Colson addressed some of these myths on
BreakPoint.
His commentary has links for additional information.
Expelled the Movie also has blogs, news, downloads,
and many other features. Some others who have addressed the Darwin-Nazi issue on
Evolution News & Views include
Robert
Crowther and David
Klinghoffer #1 and #2.

The Darwin Party attack force is in full battle array to destroy this
film. Reviews by science journals and pro-Darwin rags have unleashed a torrent
of invective. The NCSE has launched a campaign to pre-empt the damage this
movie could do to the DODO (Darwin-Only 2x) policy (see rebuttal by
John
West). The mainstream media are strangely silent.
Its as if the culture is poised to see what is going to happen on opening night.
You can make a difference. Go see this movie. Take your friends, your family,
your church, your co-workers. Tear down this wall that protects atheistic
materialism from scrutiny. Open the gates. Start the debate.
Nothing is gained by inaction, and the status quo is intolerable. If you want
to start to loosen Darwins grip on the culture, the schools, the courts, the
media, science and religion, then here is a chance to do something. Vote at the box office.
Some movie reviews worth checking:
MovieGuide.org,
AIG,
ICR,
CMI,
Rush Limbaugh and
World Magazine.
Bloggers and debaters sometimes joke about Godwins Law or
reduction at Hitlerum  the tendency for an argument to degenerate into a
discussion about Hitler. It is true that references to Hitler against an opponent
are tasteless if overdone. But it is worse to forget! When the shoe fits,
and there is a real case to be made, it is cowardly to avoid making the association out of
fear of Godwins Law. Cowardice in the face of a battle for truth is the Devilwins Law.
Next headline on:Media 
Darwinism

Israel is picking a national bird. So what feathered friend will represent the Holy Land?
The nine finalists include the hoopoe, the owl, the spur-winged plover, and the griffin vulture, but no doves.
Source: Science, Random
Samples, 4/10/2008. WWJD?

Do I hear $700,000? Step right and buy your own triceratops at the dinosaur auction.
Video at National Geographic.
Wouldnt that be a conversation piece.
(Science Random Samples, 30:5873 04/11/2008).

An evolutionary biologist is coming to revitalize research at the California Academy of Sciences in
San Franciscos Golden Gate Park. What are David Mindells goals?
He wants to expand research in comparative genomics, strengthen ties with local university researchers,
and do more public outreach--especially about evolution.
(Science Newsmakers,
320:5873, 04/11/2008.) Do they have a theater? They could show
Expelled nonstop.

David Berlinski has answered the Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion with one
of his own, The Devils Delusion (the identity of the devil is left as an exercise). His book tour began on C-SPANs
Book TV,
and sounds to his critics like the raking of
fingernails across Slate.

Dont tell the creationists: a biophysical complexity researcher has called into question
the whole notion of fitness and natural selection, according to a
Wired Blog.
You always get into trouble if you say these things out loud with creationists around,
Maya Paczuski groaned.

Richard A. Kerr gets the pun award for mixed metaphors: An Early Big Hit to Mars May Have Scarred the Planet for Life
he said in Science
(320:5873, 04/11/2008, pp. 165-166), calling the big show a striptease.
But if Mars put on a show and nobody was there to see it, would it be risque?

The Israeli Antiquities Authority is in its third year of a trial accusing an Egyptian
antiquities merchant of forgery for the famed James Ossuary and Jehoash Inscription, said
Todd Bolen.
A speedy trial means something else in a land that boasts a 7,000 year history.

Inconvenient facts? Science
Daily reported on a panel that praised Al Gores movie An Inconvient Truth for
its visual excellence and persuasiveness  but not necessarily for its facts.

All fired up: Some scientists are urging Floridas
Legislature to reject a bill that would protect teachers from being fired if they present
information challenging evolution, reported ABC News SunCoast.com.

Oh, the irony: critics of the documentary
Expelled, which opens in theaters this
Friday, have accused the producers of plagiarizing animations of the cell from a
Harvard production (a charge
Premise
Media denies). Of course to make this claim, the critics had to make an
inference of intelligent design. What message would it send to get
Expelled expelled?

Darwinism and Logic: How Strong a Grip? 04/14/2008
April 14, 2008  Science and logic are inseparable. Whether one approaches
the study of nature from reason (rationalism) or evidence (empiricism), logical
inferences and deductions are essential for understanding  or for claiming
ones scientific work produces understanding. When it comes to the
reigning evolutionary perspective, though, how can a blind, chancy process like
evolution produce reason, laws of logic, morality or knowledge?
The best way to see how Darwinism scores on logical inference from
its own premises is by
examining the views of its leading defenders in the most prestigious publications.

Nature editors: The editorial in Nature April 10 asked,1
what is natural? The occasion for the question was a transgendered
woman-who-became-a-man announcing on Oprah that he/she/it had become pregnant.
The editors seemed to waffle on the answer to the question. Uneasy to accept
this persons sexual identity crisis as natural, they had more questions than
answers: e.g., if drugs enhance performance on a standardized test, what is
so natural about prep courses designed to improve scores?
The question of what we mean by natural is a profoud issue
(see 05/11/2006
for a deep discussion about it). Nature, however, started the editorial
with a statement that begged much bigger questions: whether logic and intelligence is natural,
and how they could have evolved:

From an evolutionary perspective, we humans have good reason to be wary of things
that seem to be unnatural. Anything out of the ordinary can be
dangerous. But the evolutionary origin of that response also guarantees
that it will be guided more by emotion than by reason.

Michael Ruse: Philosophy of science is a field where logic and reason
should be on full display. It was most interesting, therefore, to see what
Michael Ruse, a self-proclaimed hard-line Darwinian philosopher, thought
of a new book, Why Think? Evolution and the Rational Mind by Ronald DeSouza
(Oxford, 2008). He reviewed the book in the March
Literary Review
of Canada.
Ruse liked the book very much, and shared its usual speculations about what intelligence is good for
in evolutionary biology: e.g., having fewer offspring means greater care must be
invested in their care  which requires judgment. That, in turn,
means brains and all of the rest getting on with others, finding protein
and so forth, he said, adding in his off-the-cuff way, I am not sure if this is really an evolutionary
justification for eating Big Macs, but one can say that this is all very
much a feedback situation.
Where Ruse seemed to get tied up in knots was considering the comeback
argument to all this from philosopher Alvin Plantinga. Ruse said Plantinga
loathes and detests evolutionary biology. But he seemed disappointed
that DeSousa in his book did not provide a satisfying answer to Plantingas
challenge: the unreliability of reason in the Darwinian scenario is reason enough
to reject evolution and embrace God. He elaborated:

As Plantinga points out, what counts in evolution is success and not the truth.
So how can we ever be sure of the truth? Perhaps none of our thoughts can tell.
Perhaps none of our thoughts can tell us about reality. Perhaps we are like beings
in a dream world....Everything we believe about evolution could be false.

Ruse acknowledged that this question even troubled Darwin himself:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of mans mind,
which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or
are at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkeys mind,
if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Surprisingly, Ruse conceded that Plantinga could have employed this quote of Darwin to make his point.
How did DeSousa respond to Darwins Doubt? In short, he argued
that our mathematical knowledge could not have evolved by natural selection.
Our brains evolved for other things. Since our brains discovered mathematics
along the way, and found it useful for all kinds of other things (including predictions
that came true), this implies our brains are able to comprehend external reality as it is,
not just as we experience it.
Ruse felt that DeSousa did not adequately answer Plantingas
challenge. Ruse himself did not have a good answer, but shrugged it off:
you are probably right, but that is a level of skepticism about knowledge
that excites philosophers and not mature human beings. Then
he changed the subject. He hoped DeSousa would write a sequel on the evolution of morality.

Eugenie Scott: Speaking of morality, the director of the National
Center for Science Education should be a good person to ask about evolutionary
ethics. Eugenie Scott reviewed a book in Nature about brave
new bioethics,2Life As It Is, Biology for the Public Sphere
by William F. Loomis (University of California Press, 2008). First, her
review of philosophy:

Sciences task is to explain the natural world: what it is, how it works
and why it is the way it is.Ethics is about the oughts and the shoulds.
Most ethicists  religious and secular  agree that knowledge of the natural world
helps us make better, or at least better-informed, ethical decisions.
But, as David Hume, Thomas Henry Huxley and G. E. Moore have noted, a particular
understanding of nature does not dictate a unique moral stance.

Thus one of the preeminent evolutionary spokespersons in America jumped right into
the quagmire of evolutionary ethics. One would think that Scott, whose life work
is to keep evolution in schools and creationism out, would bring evolutionary theory
to bear on the question and show its superiority in grounding ethics in something
sustainable. But she said almost nothing about evolution. Instead, she
de-emphasized the ability of science to inform ethical decision-making.
The idea that a realistic understanding of biology will usher in a paradise
of ethical correctness, she said, is naive: the panoply of extra-scientific considerations
that influence ethical decision-makings cannot be ignored or minimized.
At one point she described Loomis making advice about sustainability:
Loomis recommends a programme of voluntary population reduction, she
said, apparently uncomfortable with this idea: requiring
both political leadership and a radical change of public opinion.
Hopefully Loomis was not recommending mass suicide. What she failed to provide,
though, was an answer to the question she raised at the beginning: if science cannot
dictate a unique moral stance, how can it provide better, or at least better-informed,
ethical decisions?

Self-refuting sci-fi: Science journals dont have to be all dry.
Nature ends each issue with a science fiction short story featurette called
Futures.3 The April 10 entry was a story by
Neal Morison set in the far distant future. A group of scientists were reliving
a century-old discovery that a lively blogger turned out to be a robot. The moral of the story seemed to
suggest this had solved the mind-body problem, one of philosophys biggest questions,
once and for all. What the story actually
did, though was beg the question: who built the computer? And who programmed the robot?

There you have it: the worlds biggest Darwin
defenders cant answer the question: how can evolutionary theory produce any
knowledge that is trustworthy  including the supposition that evolution
is true? They either shrug their shoulders or retreat into fiction.
Since Michael Ruse took delight in a jab at the Bible, lets see
how logical it was. He said of DeSouzas introduction,
I knew I was going to love this book when the author compared Abraham
to Andrea Yates (the delusional housewife who said God told her to kill her five
children). DeSouza quipped, When enough people share a delusion, it loses
its status as a psychosis and gets a religious tax exemption instead.
Oh; you mean, like Darwinism?.
DeSouza may have scored on ridicule, but not
on logic. If Yates had truly received a message from God, she would not have
killed her children. How many times did God angrily speak through his prophets
about the idolaters who burned their children in the fire? Over and over,
God said of such horrendous practices, I did not command them, nor did it
come into My mind (e.g., Jeremiah
32:35). Human sacrifice was such a completely alien concept to the mind of God,
He pronounced severe judgments on the nations that practiced it. But
self-sacrifice for others is one of the highest measures of love: Greater
love hath no man, said Jesus, than that a man lay down his life for
his friends.
So put the pieces together. What of Gods command to
Abraham to sacrifice his son? This was not a temptation, or even a test of
Abrahams faith (God, being omniscient, already knew what Abraham would do).
This was one of many types or pictures in the Old Testament of Christ.
Just as God provided the ram as a substitute for Isaac, God provided a Lamb as
a substitute for our sins. Gods righteousness demands penalty for sin,
and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Either we will die for our sins,
or a substitute will take our place.
The only person able to give a
life in payment for the sins of the world was Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He alone in the universe was fully God and
fully man. Since the persons of the Trinity never act apart from one another,
and share fully in each others joys and sorrows, God was providing Abraham
(and all of us) an illustration of the torment of being ordered, Take thy
son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, and offer him as a sacrifice.
The pain of Gods sacrifice of His Son having as satisfaction for His justice was portrayed
in a heart-wrenching way to the world. Yes, God provided the Lamb: Himself!
What Abraham did is polar opposite from Andrea Yates did. What good came
from her delusional revelation? Yet look how the world has been blessed by
those who are children of Abraham by faith. And what kind of character was Abraham? Up to that point, and
throughout his life, he showed by his actions to be a man of sound mind and self-sacrificing
character, bold for the cause of right, but gentle and loving toward his family and
neighbors. He was not delusional. By all accounts of his friends and his enemies, he was a great man.
He was great spiritually because he believed God, and God counted it to him as righteousness (see
Hebrews 11:8-19).
Faith is only as good as its object. It is not
Abrahams faith per se that made him great: it was that the object of his faith was the true
and living God. As for Abraham founding three world religions, well, the
story of the sacrifice of Isaac makes no sense apart from its fulfillment in
Jesus Christ, and Mohammed was a latecomer who co-opted the fame of Abraham for
anti-Abrahamic ends (e.g., killing Jews and Christians). Abraham did not set
out to found any religion. He just obeyed God, and God brought about the
answers to the promises He gave Abraham: I will bless those who bless you,
and I will curse those who curse you.
Whether any religion deserves tax breaks is a side
issue. The delusional religion of Darwinism gets a free ride in all our public
schools, national parks, museums, courts, media and science labs. Who are they
to complain about religious tax exemptions? Watch out when the Darwinists gain absolute
power and act consistent with their presuppositions. They might just give
tax breaks to the Andrea Yates types who follow delusions and exhibit relativistic morality.
Neither DeSouza nor Ruse can claim any action is more rational or moral than any other.
So how logical was Michael Ruse to laugh at DeSouzas distortion
of Scripture? Pray for him. Despite his bluffing, he seems troubled by Plantingas
challenge.
Next headline on:Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory 
Bible and Theology 
Politics and Ethics

Temple Mount debris cast out by Muslims yields artifacts from Jews First
Temple, from 04/17/2005.
Note: excavation of the debris will continue this summer in Jerusalem with
volunteers: see ABR.

Dinosaur Expert Criticizes Uber-Darwinists
More than Biblical Creationists 04/13/2008
April 13, 2008  One of the field researchers most identifiable with dinosaurs
is Dr. Robert Bakker, a colorful individual whos had a long friendly rivalry with
an equally iconic figure of the modern dinosaur hunter, Jack Horner
(e.g., 11/24/2007). Brian Switek interviewed Bakker on the
Laelops
Science Blog. He introduced him as one of the most famous paleontologists working today, an
iconoclastic figure who has played a leading role of rehabilitating our understanding of
dinosaurs from the inception of the Dinosaur Renaissance through the present.
Wait till you see whom Bakker considers the greatest enemy of science education in the U.S.
Many recognize Bakkers cowboy visage from TV documentaries about
our changing views of dinosaurs. His grizzled beard, now graying, bespeaks the
passage of time that may have nuanced his views about science and theology a bit. He is
no creationist but has learned to understand and sympathize with them. In fact,
he turned the disgust many evolutionists feel toward creationists and aimed it at the likes of Richard Dawkins.

We dino-scientists have a great responsibility: our subject matter attracts kids
better than any other, except rocket-science. Whats the greatest enemy of
science education in the U.S.?

Militant Creationism?

No way. Its the loud, strident, elitist anti-creationists.
The likes of Richard Dawkins and his colleagues.

These shrill uber-Darwinists come across as insultingly dismissive of
any and all religious traditions. If youre not an atheist, then you must
be illiterate or stupid and, possibly, a danger to yourself and others.

Bakker was just getting wound up. He said the uber-Darwinists seem
devoid of joy or humor, except a haughty delight in looking down their noses.
Such elitism was unlikely to convince anyone, he said, especially the majority
of U.S. parents who still honor a Biblical tradition.
Bakker said this as one who fully accepts Deep Time (millions of years) and evolution.
But he holds a kind of distant respect for the Bible-believers whose Scriptures
grapple with the paradox of death and suffering on the one hand and incredible beauty and design
in nature on the other. His model of the right attitude is Edward Hitchcock,
a pre-Darwinian Victorian who was both a minister and a paleontologist.1
Bakker has found a hero in this early bone-hunter. Hitchcock found no easy answers
to the paradox of beauty and suffering, But he saw a Plan nevertheless.
This has made an impression on Bakker, who himself stands in awe of extraordinary beauty that
could be made intelligible by the human mind.
1. Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864) was a Congregationalist minister who went on to study dinosaur tracks and
is considered the father of ichnology, the study of impressions left by living things.
In his book The Religion of Geology and its Connected Sciences (1851),
Hitchcock attempted a harmonization of the Bible with long ages.

Bakkers attitude is refreshing compared to
the line-up of rabid Darwinists dominating the news, whose invective for creation knows no bounds.
We can only hope that further contemplation on the paradox of design and suffering,
combined with the wonder of a comprehensible and extraordinarily beautiful world,
will lead him to pick up a Bible and read it anew. The historical sciences
are limited in what they can teach. If we have a mind, would not the Maker of
minds know more about history than our feeble attempts to divine meaning from
dead things?
We also hope Bakker doesnt get into trouble
with the uber-Darwinists for his comments. His reputation seems secure,
but never underestimate the wrath of the Darwin Party. If you get Expelled, Dr.
Bakker, ask yourself what it is about the uber-Darwinists that makes them so vicious.
Why are the Bible believers usually more pleasant to be around?
Randy Olson made this point in Flock of Dodos, but he hasnt succeeded, so far,
in convincing his fellow Darwiniacs to be nice. You cant change the leopards spots.
The spots are in their genes. Scrubbing them is
not only futile, it irritates the leopard. Darwinists will only snarl louder and
bite harder at attempts to say they shouldnt be so elitist and nasty.
Is it time for a new social group?
Hopefully creationists you meet will be agreeable folk, and any questions or disagreements
notwithstanding, will welcome you, respect your accomplishments, and be willing to
engage in stimulating conversation in a calm and rational manner.
Next headline on:Dinosaurs 
Bible 
Education 
Darwin 
Intelligent Design

Moths Navigate in the Dark Against the Wind 04/12/2008
April 12, 2008  A moth weighs little more than a piece of paper, but it does
things no paper blowing in the wind can do: it can navigate with and against the wind
to get where it needs to go.Science
Daily reported on work by UK scientists who used entomological radar to monitor where the little
insects go in the dark of night. Their subjects were silver moths that migrate
high in the air for hundreds of kilometers to their breeding grounds. These moths,
they found, rely on sophisticated behaviors to control their flight direction,
and to speed their long-distance journeys into areas suitable for the next generation of moths. The work
was published in Current Biology.1
The scientists were not overly surprised that the moths take off on
the most favorable days, and use the wind to their advantage. What was most
unexpected was that the moths are not at the mercy of the winds. The article states,
the moths compensate when the wind direction is substantially off target.
This ability, called compensation for wind drift, had been seen in
low-flying insects like butterflies. For moths to do this high in the air in
the darkness of night means the moths must have a compass mechanism,
similar to that found in migrating birds. Though the research was limited to
this one species, they suggested that these mechanisms might prove to be
widespread among large windborne insect migrants.
The scientists calculated
that the silver moths they studied were able to travel 300 km per night  achieving
speeds of 30 km per hour. How they achieve this feat is not clear. Did they
explain how evolution produced flight navigation in insects independently of birds? No; they
just assumed it: Taken together, our results show that nocturnal migratory moths
have evolved a suite of behaviors to facilitate successful migrations to temporary
breeding and overwintering areas.
1. Chapman, Reynolds, ouritsen, Hill, Riley, Sivell, Smith and Woiwod,
Wind Selection and Drift Compensation Optimize Migratory Pathways in a High-Flying Moth,
Current Biology,
Volume 18, Issue 7, 8 April 2008, Pages 514-518.

At the end of the press release, they tagged
on a line about global warming. The scientists should have focused,
instead, on the remarkable evidence for design. Can you imagine a featherweight
machine that knows how to sail in the air? We wont even bother thinking
about how similar wonders could have evolved separately in birds and insects, which
are nowhere near each other on Darwins tree of lie (04/11/2008).Exercise: Make a list of the items of hardware and software you would
have to add to a 2-inch scrap of paper blowing in the wind to make it be able to arrive at
a precise point 300 km away.&nbsp Extra credit: Add to your list how many
more items of hardware and software you would have to build onto the paper
for it to reproduce itself with copies that could fly back home, having never
been there before. Notice that this implies a requirement: the hardware needs to
be lightweight enough to make your scrap of paper not plummet to the ground.
Next headline on:Terrestrial Zoology 
Amazing Facts

Not Even Wrong: Darwins Tree Suffers Base Blow 04/11/2008
April 11, 2008  Darwins tree of life icon is suffering another
blow. The root of multicellular life was supposed to be the simplest, most
primitive animal. Now, scientists are seriously considering that the mother of
all animals was a complex animal with a gut, tissues, a nervous system and amazing light
displays: a comb jelly.PhysOrg
set up the announcement as if to maximize the surprise: And the first animal on
Earth was a ...  If the suspense is killing you, consider the impact on
the scientists who, under a grant from the National Science Foundation, concluded it
was a comb jelly. Casey Dunn exclaimed, This was a complete shocker.
So shocking that we initially thought something had gone very wrong.
Comb jellies are more complex than sponges, long considered the most
primitive animal because it lacks tissues and organs. Placing a comb jelly
(ctenophore) at the base of Darwins tree puts the mystery of the evolution
of complex tissues into an unobservable past.
Dunn said the early comb jellies probably looked different than the
ones alive today, but last year (04/03/2007)
a comb jelly found in Chinas Cambrian fossil beds looked essentially modern.
It was dated to early Cambrian  supposedly 540 million years old.Science Daily began its report
with a summary of the impact: A new study mapping the evolutionary history of
animals indicates that Earths first animal -- a mysterious creature
whose characteristics can only be inferred from fossils and studies of living animals--was
probably significantly more complex than previously believed.
A subsection was titled, Shaking up the tree of life.
Ironically, this made the cover story of Nature April 10,
with the caption, Improved Relations.

If the first animal was a predator, what did it
eat? If Darwins tree fell in the falsification forest, and nobody
cared, would it even make a sound?
Darwinists act so shocked. This is old news. Why they
continue to be tree-huggers when Darwins tree icon has been shown to be a myth?
(02/01/2007). Creationists already knew
it was a tree of lie, composed of the building blocks of lie
(03/19/2008). Old myths die hard.
Next headline on:Fossils 
Darwinian Evolution 
Marine Biology

Who helped Copernicus publish his book? Protestants! Learn about the
myth-debunking history in the 04/30/2004 entry.

Grand Canyon Age Estimates Fluctuate Wildly 04/10/2008
April 10, 2008  Just when the park rangers were getting familiar telling the
public the Grand Canyon was carved about 5 million years ago, some geologists
announced the shocking news that it might be less than a million
(05/31/2002,
07/22/2002). The age was plummeting as recently
as November (11/30/2007).
But then last month, another revision came: its 17 million years old.
Now, another team claims it is 55 million years old, or older.
National
Geographic News announced that the majestic gorge is 9 times older than thought, and
PhysOrg claimed it may be as
old as the dinosaurs. Are these estimates or just guesstimates?
The new date, to be published in the May GSA Bulletin, is
based on an inference about the time when minerals of apatite, containing uranium and thorium,
began to cool when first exposed to the surface. This inference, however,
depends on models of where the minerals formed and became exposed. The
National Geographic article called this only a clock of sorts for
dating the canyon.
The geologists from Caltech and Colorado University at Boulder
noted that the rocks at the bottom of the canyon dated the same as those at the
top. From this they inferred that an ancient canyon existed 55 million years
ago that later became integrated with other sections that had evolved separately.
Why? Because the only way the bottom and the top could have cooled at the
same time, they surmised, was that the gorge formed from previously existing
canyons that eventually connected, rather than a plateau. Brian Wernicke, a
geology professor at Caltech, explained, If there had not been a canyon,
the gorge and rim samples would have been different.
Some amazing claims emerge from the complexities of this model.
In the PhysOrg article, Rebecca Flowers of Colorado University was quoted saying,
If you stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon today, the bottom of the ancestral
canyon would have sat over your head, incised into rocks that have since been eroded away.
Visitors at the rim would be astonished to look up a mile into the sky and try to visualize
an imaginary canyon above them that somehow turned into the canyon below them.
Not only that, the river was running in the opposite direction! During all
these millions of years, the plateaus around the canyon were eroding as fast as
the canyon itself, they said. Small streams on the plateaus appear to
have been just as effective at stripping away rock as the ancient Colorado River
was at carving the massive canyon.
If these inferences appear to go far beyond all empirical support,
resting on some ratios of minerals, so be it. Its a complicated
picture because different segments of the canyon appear to have evolved at different
times and subsequently were integrated.

Do you get the idea that modern secular geologists
are absolutely clueless about the origin of one of the most stark exhibits of geology
in the world? They can be perfectly happy with
70 million years, 100,000 years, 6 million years, 17 million years or 55 million
years. All that matters is keeping the naturalistic belief system intact.
They will even give us an imaginary canyon in the sky (that used to be ancient sediments)
with a river eroding it down as fast as small streams did. Side canyons
all join up together and make the river turn around and flow
the other way. Isnt science wonderful.
One little observation the secular team mentioned
should have jumped up and shouted for attention.
If the inferred dates of cooling were the same at the bottom and the top, then guess
what! Maybe, just maybe, the canyon formed catastrophically. We know
that happened at Washingtons channeled scablands and at Mt. St. Helens.
Why, that would explain the whole Grand Canyon in a matter of days or weeks.
Is that any less scientific than wavering between dates that differ by two orders
of magnitude?. If it were the only inference to be drawn, that would be
one thing  but the Grand Canyon is filled with other evidences of rapid
deposition and rapid canyon formation. Take time to review some of them from our
09/16/2005 commentary.
In any other science, huge swings of speculation and reckless
deployment of ad hoc circumstances and reliance on unobservables would be scorned.
Creation scientists have
been studying the Grand Canyon for decades now. They can point to real-world
analogues to explain what happened. Their confidence in creation
and Flood models has made some of them call this vast area Exhibit A
for a worldwide flood and catastrophism. The elite secular geologists pretend
these scientists, some with PhDs and years of field experience, dont even
exist. Take your pick whom you think has more credibility. One thing
was clear to a New York Times reporter  the Christians have a richer time
in the Canyon than the evolutionists (10/06/2005).
Next headline on:Geology 
Dating Methods

Big Science Fights Its Customers 04/09/2008
April 9, 2008  Has Big Science lost contact with the public it
serves? Several recent reports show the scientific establishment (as represented by
the leading journals) taking positions at polar opposites of the majority, and
wagging the dog of the body politic.

Chimeras: Even though ethicists have called it a monstrous attack on human rights,
to blend human embryos with animals, UK scientists created the first chimera of cow and human genetic
material, reported PhysOrg.

Stem cells: Induced pluripotent stem cells apparently have all the benefits
of embryonic stem cells and none of the ethical problems. Why, then, does
Nature continue to argue that
embryonic stem cell research must continue?

Presidential pressure: At the same time Nature and Science have
been stifling debate on intelligent design and stem cell research, they have been calling for
a science debate among the US presidential candidates. While science policy is
certainly a major topic for any presidential campaign, its apparent
from the Science Debate line-up of
supporters (mostly liberals) that the pressure is not so much to give the public and its
candidates a chance to freely express their views on the role of science in society, but to
find out which candidates align with the goals of the science establishment, and to use
their statements as campaign fodder.

Expelled: If anyone thought for a moment that the scientific establishment
would be taken aback by the popularity of Ben Steins upcoming documentary
Expelled (see 03/29/2008,
04/07/2008), and perhaps feel a little fear or remorse
at this public backlash against scientific intolerance, they need only look at todays post on the
Nature
blog. A spirit of contempt exudes from every line of the entry.
Meanwhile, for those not utterly tired of Expelled, the National Center for Science Education
has launched an Expelled Exposed website.
The motives of those wanting to open the debate about evolution were suspect: religiously
motivated politicking and subterfuge for injecting the religious beliefs held by
some into the science classroom  but no such motive-questioning in the other direction
could be found. Presumably, Nature and the NCSE always act from pure motives.1

Scientific institutions were founded to serve humanity through research, innovation,
national prestige and improving the health and safety of its citizens. Open inquiry, debate,
and academic freedom have always been the heart and soul of science. Many individual
scientists still exemplify those ideals. Judging from the official positions
of the leading journals and institutions, though, has Big Science fallen into a self-serving
body with its own political agenda, and the power to marginalize and stifle the views of those
who disagree with official positions?
1. In science, the motives of a person making an argument are supposed to be irrelevant to its validity.
Even if Nature could prove that religion played a role in motivating some of the backers, neither the
Academic Freedom Act nor the Expelled movie advocate teaching intelligent design in the
science classroom; they only argue that scientific criticisms of Darwinism should not be forbidden.
Besides, the leading spokespersons for Darwinism admitted on camera that atheism
motivated their antagonism to intelligent design. Nature failed to criticize
that religious motivation  or even mention it.

Big Science has lost its innocence. Scientific
institutions were once clubs of citizens who did scientific experiments out of their
love for knowledge and desire for truth. In the 20th century,
especially after World War II, science became a necessity for national prestige,
military success and economic innovation. Through the advocacy of scientists like
Vannevar Bush, the government began to pour millions of dollars into pure and applied science.
Power corrupts. The momentum gained by scientific institutions invariably turned their
interests inward. What used to consist of small, privately-funded
associations is now Big Science: huge institutions, feeding at the public trough, with
a political stake in their ability to maintain a monolithic consensus as they lobby
the government. Almost vanished is
the heroic individual of yesteryear, the Faraday or
Kepler revealing new knowledge to the world. A practicing scientist
today needs to know how to work the system. He or she must belong to the right
associations, attend the right conferences, and say the right things. Individuals
get swept up into the funding rush and herd mentality in order to survive.
The managers at the top of the food chain are far removed from the worker bees at the bottom.
Science institutions these days are like small cities with their own official press
core, employment agencies, affirmative action boards, diversity and inclusion departments
and P&P (policies and procedures) dictums.
Intelligent design represents one of the biggest threats to Big Science
(not science itself) in recent decades. The leading advocates of ID, all
with impeccable academic credentials, know how to make an inference to the best explanation
based on the collective evidence available from astronomy, paleontology and cell biology.
They also know that all pretence of epistemic superiority by modern science has been undermined,
not by religious claims, but by the best thinkers in philosophy of science for over a century.
They see through the phony, outdated scientism that persists in public perception.
And so they defy the consensus.
They demand a return to academic freedom and debate.
Reason, empiricism, argumentation
about the evidence  one would think scientists would welcome this.
Instead, Big Science flexes its muscle
and says that anyone outside The Wall is ignorant, stupid, wicked, or (worse)
religiously motivated. Their behavior is reminiscent of the self-serving
communist party bosses who did whatever they needed to do to hang onto their cushy jobs.
Knowledge, ethics, integrity  those are lost in the system. Maintaining
power is what matters.
Reader, please see what is going on. Sad as it seems, you must
jettison your beloved old preconceptions that todays Big Science institutions represent
neutral, unbiased, honest, sincere seekers after Truth. Look at them now like
the other large political pressure groups 
Big Labor, Big Education, the Military-Industrial Complex, Big Entertainment, and
Big Wall Street. Each of these bodies has upright individuals who do
the best job they can. But the scientific institutions are about consensus and
politics and money. They are incorrigible. All dissent will be crushed.
What is to be done? For one, vote your conscience.
Write letters. Support academic freedom, like the
Academic Freedom Petition.
Get involved with your school board at the grass roots level. Support a good
turnout at the Expelled movie, to raise awareness of the problem.
Encourage politicians to stand up to the Big Science lobbyists.
Become a Citizen Scientist.
And wherever you can, hold Big Science to the fire of its conscience.
Science was born in a culture of openness, individuality, integrity, and above all,
a love for knowledge and a desire to help people. It sought for the truth about the world.
It was willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads, recognizing its own limitations. Sad to say,
Big Science needs to be shamed back to those core values. They are supposed to be
accountable to the people. Stand up to them. Dont be intimidated
by the NCSE and other dogmatists; point them to the battle going on in their own conscience.
When they contradict their own core values, call them on the carpet for it. Half the battle
will be over when you get the Big Science bureaucrats, KGB and
propagandists to shut their loud mouths and blush a little.
Next headline on:Politics and Ethics 
Evolution 
Intelligent Design

Darwin on a Chip 04/08/2008
April 8, 2008  PhysOrg,
EurekAlert and
and Science Daily
announced Evolution on the table top. Reporting on a paper in
PLoS Biology by Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce at Scripps, the article claims
that the two scientists have produced a computer-controlled system that
can drive the evolution of improved RNA enzymesbiological catalystswithout human input.
The scientists claim they have achieved Darwinian evolution on a chip.1
The press release claims the evolution machine demonstrated
adaptation via random mutations:

This beautifully illustrates what about evolution is random and what is not.
While the end point is predicted by the selection pressurei.e., the
decreasing concentration of ingredients determines that enzymes will evolve
to cope with decreased concentrationthe actual mutations that allow
this are completely random and cannot be predicted at the outseti.e.,
if you bought an evolution machine and ran the same experiment, your end
product would be an enzyme that could cope with low concentrations too, but the
mutations that it acquired to do this might be different.

In the original paper, the authors advertised their experiment as a way to celebrate Darwins
200th birthday next year. Our microfluidic system allows us to perform Darwinian
evolution experiments in much the same way that one would execute a computer program,
they said. The scientific community will soon celebrate the 200th anniversary of the
birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal workOn the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, they continued, ignoring
Wallace (03/03/2008)
and neglecting the rest of the title: and the Preservation of Favoured Races in
the Struggle for Life. They continued, explaining why their lab experiment can
help the celebration:

The principles of Darwinian evolution are fundamental to understanding
biological organization at the level of populations of organisms and for explaining
the development of biological genomes and macromolecular function. Darwinian evolution
also has become a chemical tool for discovering and optimizing functional macromolecules in the
test tube (for recent reviews, see [2–5]). Laboratory evolution is greatly accelerated
compared with natural evolution but requires substantial manipulation by the experimenter,
which is imprecise, time consuming, and usually performed in an ad hoc manner.

Their method, they say, combines the best of real-life subjects and laboratory control.
They took an existing RNA enzyme, class 1 RNA ligase, and subjected it to mutations,
then added selection pressure in the form of decreased quantity of substrate.
The ones with the most advantageous mutations survived to reproduce. The abstract explained,
The final evolved enzyme contained a set of 11 mutations that conferred
a 90-fold improvement in substrate utilization, coinciding with the applied selective pressure.
Heres how they concluded:

The runtime parameters for evolution are established at the outset and are
enforced precisely throughout the course of an experiment. The continuous
stream of real-time data provides a high-resolution record of an evolutionary trajectory,
which can be obtained as a function of population size, population heterogeneity,
growth conditions, and the availability of limiting resources. Each
microchip contains multiple microfluidic circuits that can be
addressed independently, and the chip as a whole can be produced at
nominal cost. Thus, Darwinian evolution becomes commoditized, allowing
one to perform many evolution experiments with little more
difficulty than the execution of a computer program.

The press release advertised this evolution-machine as a teaching tool.
Evolution has taken another step away from being dismissed as a theory
in the classroom, thanks to a new paper published this week in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology,
the article began. ...In the future, this evolution-machine could
feature in the classroom as well as the lab, allowing students to watch evolution
happen in their biology lessons.
1. Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce, Darwinian Evolution on a Chip,
Public
Library of Science: Biology, Vol. 6, No. 4, e85 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060085, published 4/8/2008.

Darwin isnt on this chip. The chip is on Darwin. His disciples just
put one on his shoulder. How convenient for Gerald Joyce to start with a complex
RNA enzyme. He has said that the spontaneous appearance of chains of RNA on the early earth would
have been a near miracle (02/15/2007).
Something is very wrong with this picture. Darwinian evolution experiments
are like the way one would execute a computer program? OK, Baloney Detectors, get busy. Your
assignment is to identify all the ways the scientists snuck information into the system, making this
a case of intelligent design, and therefore worthless as an
illustration of Darwinian evolution. How should they have designed the system to
really mimic Darwinism? If you need help, you can re-read the
following entries:
07/31/2002,
12/18/2002,
05/08/2003,
10/04/2005,
07/05/2006,
11/14/2006,
08/07/2007.
Grad students can scrutinize the original open-source paper in detail.
Before teaching the kiddies about Darwinian evolution on the tabletop, teach
them the word TANSTAAFL: There aint no such thing as a free lunch.
That will help inoculate them against the scam artists known as evolutionary
science reporters.
Next headline on:Darwinian Evolution 
Education

A pre-Huygens look at Titan and its missing oceans of methane:
from 04/25/2003.
The Huygens probe landed on soft mud, and the Cassini orbiter discovered the equatorial
regions are dry and covered with dunes of ice grains perhaps coated with organic
compounds.

Watch for Falling Amino Acids 04/08/2008
April 8, 2008  A long-standing problem of origin-of-life theories is how
proteins became left-handed. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins,
come in right-handed and left-handed forms, yet life uses only the left-handed
form.
The two isoforms are otherwise identicalyet one amino acid of
the wrong hand in a protein spells doom for its function. Wherever amino
acids form naturally (as in Stanley Millers spark-discharge experiment),
they form in roughly equal amounts of both hands (racemic mixture). How
could a natural system isolate and purify the mixture without the DNA code and
ribosomes that ensure quality control in life? One new suggestion printed
in Science
Daily was adorned with a picture of a ribosome and the suggestive title,
Meteorites Delivered The Seeds Of Earths Left-hand Life.
The first paragraph almost sounds like the beginning of a childrens story:

Flash back three or four billion years -- Earth is a hot, dry and lifeless place.
All is still. Without warning, a meteor slams into the desert plains at over
ten thousand miles per hour. With it, this violent collision may have planted
the chemical seeds of life on Earth.

These seeds (amino acids) would have had a tough time without fertilizer
landing in a desert of rock and sand, since fertilizer comes from living organisms.
Amino acids are not that hard to manufacture in natural conditions. Only a
large stretch of imagination could consider them to be seeds. The story continues with
the metaphor switching from farming to cooking.

Scientists have presented evidence that desert heat, a little water,
and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the
first prerequisites for life: The dominance of
left-handed amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet.

The article reports on research by scientists from Columbia University and the American
Chemical Society. Till now, simulations of early-earth conditions and chemical models
have only been able to produce a slight excess of one hand over the other
(06/21/2004,
11/19/2004,
11/05/2004,
12/03/2004,
03/23/2005).
Another problem is keeping them one-handed (09/26/2002).
The scientists first proposed that meteorites accumulate a 5-10% excess of one hand
from circularly polarized light from neutron stars. Landing on earth, the excess becomes
amplified through repeated episodes of wetting and drying.
Thus the desert:
this would not work in an oceanic primordial soup. The meteor has to
deliver its goods on dry ground, then be close enough to the ocean to reach
a little bit of water. These are called plausible prebiotic
conditions. It is hard to believe, however, that sufficient quantities
of amino acids could have been delivered to one location on a large planet.
Also, the wetting process tends to dissolve the polypeptides; they only crystallize
during the drying period. Even if a long chain of one-handed amino acids did
crystallize, it would be the end of the line unless incorporated with RNA or DNA
into a system. In life, both depend on each other.
The press release is filled with optimism. Ronald Breslow (Columbia)
added humor to the imaginary scenario:

These meteorites were bringing in what I call the seeds of chirality,
stated Breslow. If you have a universe that was just the mirror image of the one
we know about, then in fact, presumably it would have right-handed amino acids.
Thats why Im only half kidding when I say there is a guy on the other side of
the universe with his heart on the right hand side.

A check of the far side of the universe is not necessary. Presumably Titan, Enceladus or Europa
could have gotten its shipment in right-handed amino acids, since it is a matter of chance
according to naturalistic theories. That is why astrobiologists consider finding
right-handed polypeptides a biomarker.
The goal is 100% purity of one hand over the other. Living things
enforce 100% purity through multiple quality-control mechanisms. It was
not clear from the article how much of an excess was actually achieved experimentally.
The report seemed to leap to the conclusion that amplification by wetting and drying
cycles would achieve the necessary purity:

Breslow found that the left and right-handed amino acids
would bind together as they crystallized from water. The left-right bound
amino acids left the solution as water evaporated, leaving behind increasing amounts
of the left-amino acid in solution. Eventually, the amino acid in excess
became ubiquitous as it was used selectively by living organisms.

That last sentence, though, implies the existence of the DNA code and ribosomes.
How a pre-genetic system could tell the difference, or care, was left unexplained.

This story is far-fetched to the extreme.
Anyone familiar with the problem must stand aghast at the leaps of faith required
to believe in their fairy tale. For a refresher on the severity of this problem,
read our online book, chapter 3 and chapter 4.
They get away with it because their worldview requires it, and they
have nothing else. Dressing it up with humor
and metaphor doesnt distract the wise.
Shame on science reporters for portraying fairy tales as science. Dave Mosher,
who trashed the ID movie Expelled yesterday (see 04/07/2008),
had no problem with the pseudoscience in this paper. In fact, he even embellished
it more in his LiveScience article that was syndicated to
Yahoo.com
and other news outlets: Neutron starlight might have zapped amino acids riding on
comets and asteroids into a bias, and a little water might have concentrated them after
they crashed into Earth, a team of scientists now say. So Mr. Mosher thinks he knows
science well enough to demonize all the PhDs in the movie Expelled, but cannot see the
demons of irrationality and imagination channeling through evolution-worshiping scientists.
Thats why
one of our readers, a retired engineer, called the guilty website Sèance Daily
(also works for Live Sèance).
He wrote up a spoof that has more believable science in it than the article above:

Sèance Daily (Apr. 6, 2008): Flash back three or four billion years --
Earth is a hot, dry and fence-less place. All is still. Without warning, a
meteor slams into the desert plains at over ten thousand miles per hour.
With it, this violent collision may have planted the chemical seeds of
chain-link fences on Earth.
Scientists have presented evidence that desert heat, a little hand waving,
and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first
prerequisites for aluminum fences: The dominance of left-handed aluminum
atoms, the building blocks of chain-linked fences on this planet.
In a report at the 235th national meeting of the Atheist Apologist Society,
Donald Slowbres, B.S., University Professor, Darwin University, and former
AAS Official Watchmaker Debunker, described how aluminum fences came from
outer space.
Chains of aluminum atoms make up the strands found in fences, various rods,
and all cheap sets of pots and pans. There are two orientations of aluminum
atoms, left and right, which mirror each other in the same way your hands
do. This is known as chirality. In order for chain-linked fences to arise,
fences must contain only one chiral form of aluminum atoms, left or right,
Slowbres noted.
If you mix up chirality, a fences properties change enormously.
Chain-linked fences couldnt operate with just random mixtures of stuff, he
said....
... Evidence of this left-handed excess was found on the
surfaces of these meteorites, which have crashed into Earth even within the
last hundred years, landing in Disneys Fantasy Land Theme Park.
Slowbres simulated what occurred after the dust settled following a meteor
bombardment, when the aluminum atoms on the meteor mixed with the primadona
soup. Under credible pre-fencetic conditions-- desert-like temperatures
and a little bit of random mutation -- he exposed aluminum atom chemical
precursors to those aluminum atoms found on meteorites.
Slowbres and Darwin chemistry grad student Quickdraw McDuck found that these
cosmic aluminum atoms could directly transfer their chirality to simple
aluminum atoms found in aluminum fences. Thus far, Slowbress team is the
first to demonstrate that this kind of handedness transfer is possible under
these conditions.
On pre-fence Earth, this transfer left a slight excess of left-handed
aluminum atoms, Slowbres said. His next experiments with beer cans
replicated the chemistry that led to the amplification and eventual
dominance of left-handed aluminum atoms.
The steps afterward that led towards the genesis of chain-linked fences are
shrouded in mystery. Slowbres hopes to shine more light on pre-fence Earth
as he turns his attention to iron atoms, the chemical units of the Eiffel
Tower and its more primitive cousin, the Eiffel Fence.
This work is related to the probability that there is chain-linked fences
somewhere else, said Slowbres. Everything that is going on on Earth
occurred because the meteorites happened to land here. But they are
obviously landing in other places. If there is another planet that has the
cow pastures and all of the things that cows excrete, you should be able to
get the same process rolling.

Expelled: Battle of the Reviews 04/07/2008
April 7, 2008  Two weeks before
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
hits the theaters (April 18), reviewers are starting to weigh in. One could
hardly find a bigger contrast between two reviews that came out a day apart.
Dave Mosher, writing for
Live Science,
used every trick in the book to call this a bad film in every way.
He called it sinister, outrageous, shoddy, fallacious and gloomy. Typical line about intelligent design:
Scientists see it as creationism veiled in pseudoscience, an effort with
religious backing designed to generate the appearance of controversy among scientists
about Darwinian evolution where there is none. Mosher continually tried
to portray the Darwinists as scientists and the anti-Darwinists as
religiously motivated, even though all of the ID advocates in the film are highly
credentialed scientists themselves. Notably, he could not classify them as fundamentalist
Christians because a number of them  Berlinski, Schroeder, and Ben Stein himself 
are either Jewish or make no claims about religion. Dr.& Steve Fuller, for instance,
a highly regarded philosopher of science and author of leading books on the subject,
believes that intelligent design has a right to a fair hearing in the marketplace
of scientific ideas. Mosher also avoided the fact that some of Darwinisms
staunchest proponents made strong statements on camera about their atheism.
Marvin Olasky had a very different attitude in
World magazine. He enjoyed this
seriously funny movie and compares it to the 1775 shot heard round the
world that may start a new American revolution. It should be rated R,
he quipped, for reasonable, radical, risible, and right. Olasky defended
the visual imagery saying this is a movie, not a dissertation, but also defended the
connection between Darwinism and Hitler, based on his own research. If you
read an anti-Expelled review that dodges the issue of substance by concentrating merely on style,
he said, as if to pre-empt Dave Moshers negative review,
youll be seeing another sign of closed minds.
Ted Baehr at MovieGuide.org
also gives it a strong positive review. Atheists and Darwinists should make
sure that people of faith and values and agnostics do not see this movie, the
veteran movie reviewer said. It is so well crafted that it will completely
expose the naked inconsistencies of the Darwinists. It will equip every person of
faith and values with common sense to refute the arguments of the academic overlords.

Baloney Detectors
are going to have a field day with the reviews of this film. They are so polarized
for and against, it should be easy to find out who is engaging in emotional tactics
instead of reasoned debate. See the film if you can before being influenced by
the press. You can expect the secular mainstream press to be uniformly negative.
Keep in mind a couple of things. A movie can only say so much in 90 minutes.
This is a highly complex topic with many side issues. The basic question is clear;
is intelligent design sufficiently supported, and Darwinism sufficiently challenged, to
allow academic freedom for both sides to be heard? Why should careers of qualified
scientists be ruined over this? Why the systematic effort to prevent a hearing
of challenges to the views of a small minority, its advocates profoundly atheistic,
instead of letting the evidence, reason and common sense carry the debate forward?
Another thing to keep in mind
is that this is a movie, not a legal brief. To attract audiences to theaters there
has to be enough appeal with visuals, action and controversy or else the subject could
easily bore them. We didnt see Live Science complaining when Randy Olson
used humor and satire with Flock of Dodos (compare that
review
with this one). Stein feels strongly enough about this issue he went out on a
limb to make the case in a convincing yet seriously funny way.
Its intended to get the ball rolling toward public debate on an issue that is
crying for open and fair investigation.
For those who need the scholarly backup, there are plenty of densely-worded thick tomes
available. One mid-level book (with enough facts and references to support
every claim), that is comprehensive yet approachable, is The Politically Incorrect Guide
to Darwinism and Intelligent Design by Jonathan Wells (Regnery, 2006), available at
Access Research
Network. This book would be a good companion piece to the film.
The ARN catalog
has many more books on the subject suitable for anyone from the high school student
to the science reporter to the PhD academic researcher.
As interesting a phenomenon as Expelled is in the culture war,
no movie should be a crutch. Get informed so that your opinion has legs.
Next headline on:Media 
Darwinism 
Intelligent Design

Evolution After the Fact 04/04/2008
April 4, 2008  Many scientific theories are evaluated on their ability to make
predictions. Good theories suggest experiments that lead a researcher to discover new
things. In biology, however, evolution is a word often invoked as an
after-market explanation for observations that emerged outside of the theory.
Here are some recent examples:

Ant farm: Science
Daily reported on Smithsonian scientists who constructed an evolutionary tree
after observing ants abilities to farm fungus for food.
By studying certain fungus-growing ants, which our study indicates are almost
like living fossils, we might be able to better understand steps
involved in the evolution of ant agriculture, one researcher said.
Living fossils might have been seen as evidence against evolution
(10/13/2004). According to
the evolutionary timetable, they represent organisms that have shown no evolution for tens or
hundreds of millions of years. Somehow, despite that admission, the evidence was
being used as support for evolution. The quotation indicates that if evolution has
explanatory power in this case, it is in future tense.

Mystery religion: The phrase abominable mystery seems synonymous
with Darwins frustration at explaining the origin of flowering plants
(01/30/2002,
12/21/2007).
National
Geographic admitted as much, saying, The apparently sudden appearance of angiosperms
in the fossil record confounded Darwin, who worried that it might pose a problem for
his theory of evolution by natural selection.
That admission, however, was the only expression of doubt about
evolution in a story about the worlds oldest plant-eating lizard.
Even though this spectacular fossil challenges long-held views about
lizard evolution, the fact of lizard evolution was never in doubt. Ker Than explained
that it was a choice between two evolutionary possibilities:
either the ancestral condition for lizard diet was not as restricted as once
thought or that diet has been highly labile [easily changed] throughout lizard evolution.
How this fossil solved the abominable mystery of flowering plants was
not explained. Thus the new fossil species, dubbed Kuwajimalla kagaensis,
could indicate that angiosperms were already in existence and perhaps
widespread millions of years earlier than had been thought, the researchers say.
Might that not count as evidence that flowering plants were created fully formed?
Such an option was never in the cards: Scientists have since uncovered
fossils tracing the evolution of angiosperms from nonflowering plants, called gymnosperms.

Ancient mother: They are separated by a vast ocean and by millions of years,
but tiny prehistoric bones found on an Australian farm have been directly linked to
a strange and secretive little animal that lives today in the southern rainforests of South America.
The observation is: a living animal that resembles a fossil animal.
Science Daily
wove this into a story about how this Primitive Mouse-Like Creature May Be
Ancestral Mother Of Australias Unusual Pouched Mammals.
PhysOrg echoed the tale, claiming,
The fossil ankle and ear bones of Djarthia make it clear that the
Monito del Monte [the living animal] descends from a Djarthia-like ancestor,
and so probably returned to South America from Australia before Gondwana broke up.

Hanging around: Spiders often hang upside down in their webs.
What does this mean? Science
Daily gave Darwin the microphone:

The great majority of land animals evolved to use the ground as the main support for their motion.
Accordingly, they evolved legs capable of supporting the weight of their whole bodies, enabling
them to move around with their heads above their feet. However, many spider species found it
more convenient to literally turn their world upside down. They spend most of their
lives hanging suspended by their legs, and walk by swinging under the influence of gravity.

The article tells how researchers were intrigued by this evolutionary phenomenon,
even though they had not watched any spiders evolve. One of their focal questions was
the evolutionary importance of bridging -- the technique many spiders
use to move between remote plants by building their own silk bridges, it said.
Somehow they discovered evolution by watching live spiders: We discovered
that spiders that live upside-down have evolved disproportionately longer legs relative
to normal spiders, which enables them to move faster while bridging than while
normally walking on the ground.
Again, both kinds of spiders are alive
today, but Now, somehow
we have a much better understanding of how an animal shape should evolve when
animals spent most of their lifetime hanging upside-down. Yet people have observed
living spiders for centuries without seeing evolution between them. Is it even clear which
one evolved from the other? To the hanging spider, the walking spider looks upside-down.
A physicist was brought in to study the energetics of upside-down
locomotion. Nowhere was there any mention, though, of an observable series of intermediates
(perhaps spiders walking sideways) that would demonstrate evolution had occurred or was occurring. Nor was there
any mention of how a spider finding it more convenient to hang around in an
inverted world found a way to gather the random mutations required to allow natural selection to
adapt its body for efficient upside-down mobility.

Fuzzy logic: Observation: fuzzy fibers of cellulose (a protein) can sometimes be found in
salt deposits. Conclusion: Microscopic Fuzz May Be Best Evidence of Martians.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, If Martian life existed a few billion years ago, scientists
think any plant-like microbes would have left behind a stringy fuzz of fibers.
Read all about it on Space.com.
Even though no life has ever been found on Mars, we already know that evolution will be the explanation.
We can already envision Martian life cooking up cellulose like popcorn:

If a future Mars-bound robotic explorer seeks out signs of ancient life, [Jack]
Griffith [U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] said looking for cellulose in salt deposits
peppered south of the planets equator would be the best places to start.
Cellulose was one of the earliest polymers organisms made during their evolution,
so it pops out as the most likely thing youd find on Mars, if you
found anything at all, Griffith said. Looking for it in salt deposits
is probably a very good way to go.
[Phil] Christensen [Arizona State U] said Martian salt deposits likely
formed after briny pools of water on the planets surface — a sun-bathed environment
for photo-synthesizing organisms that may have made cellulose.
The sun is an awfully nice source of energy to turn down
in your evolution as a microbe, Christensen said. If we do
find signs of life on Mars, I wouldnt be at all surprised if it is plant-like in nature.

In living organisms on earth, cellulose is manufactured by a group of complex molecular machines.
They transcribe
the recipe from the genetic code written in DNA, translate it into enzymes, and then
weave the sugars into intricate chains (try the
Wikipedia description for a
taste of the complexity of the process). These scientists did not explain, nor did
they even think to ask,
how hopeful microbes wanting to green up a red planet could have figured this out.

Demon drink: How did Asians become protected from alcoholism?
Call Darwin: That these populations turn out to be less prone to the ravages of
demon rum, explained Kenneth Kidd [Yale School of Medicine], is just a
serendipitous event of evolution. So reported
Science Daily.
Since Asians are interfertile with American alcoholics, inter-species evolution
does not demonstrate a Darwin-style Origin of Species.

Your inner fish: Observation: selenium is toxic to humans but is necessary
in trace amounts, or else serious diseases result. Explanation, according to
PhysOrg:
Although this trace element is essential in the diet of humans, it seems
that we have lost some of the need for selenium, which occurs in proteins
and is transported in blood plasma, when our evolutionary ancestors left the oceans
and evolved into mammals.
The article continued without blinking an
explanatory eye: Selenium-containing proteins evolved in prehistoric times,
it said, and Weve found that the evolutionary change from fish to mammals
was accompanied by a reduced use of proteins containing selenium. The reporter
seemed intent on inserting Darwinese (03/06/2008 into every sentence.
Some insects have also lost the need for selenium during the course of evolution.
The scientists linked humans minimum daily requirement to the the evolved reduced
utilization of selenium that occurred since we ostensibly crawled out of the sea millions of years ago.

Each article above invoked evolution after the fact. But isnt that an
academic detail, now that evolution has been proven? Darwin told us so,
announced a story April 1 on EurekAlert.
No fooling: UBC researcher shows natural selection speeds up speciation.
You may have thought such a thing had been discovered a long time ago,
but these researchers were announcing a first. In the first experiment of its
kind conducted in nature, a University of British Columbia evolutionary biologist
has come up with strong evidence for one of Charles Darwins cornerstone ideas
 adaptation to the environment accelerates the creation of new species.
They repeated their claim of priority: As far as advancing Darwins theory
that natural selection is a key driver of speciation, this is the first
experiment of its kind done outside of a lab setting. The findings are exciting.
Surely, this must be big news. What did Patrik Nosil find in a 200m x 200m parcel of
chaparral of southern California? He gathered walking stick insects
from one location and put them in another. He and his co-worker found that coloration patterns,
such as a white line along the body, changed as they adapted to a new location. Then,
the ones that could detoxify leaves of unfamiliar plants survived to seal the deal
of speciation.
The dramatic tone of the claims led us to examine what was said in the original
paper published in PLoS One.1 There, by contrast, Patrik Nosil and
co-author Cristina Sandoval admitted that their work was extremely limited, and their
conclusions much more tentative:

The findings suggest that selection on a greater number of niche dimensions
promotes evolutionary divergence. Of course, replication of the data
reported here is required before the robustness and generality of
our findings can be known. This is especially the case
because only a single species pair was examined.

Their collection methods (shaking a bush for 15 minutes, watching what kind of leaves
an insect preferred, etc) and measurements of
fitness (e.g., minute changes in coloration) also seemed highly subjective.
Creationists might agree that the two species in the study had a common ancestor anyway.
In few other sciences would such a limited study like this permit such far-reaching conclusions
about all of life.
The paper also defended a contra-Darwin viewpoint, viz: We stress that arguments
for the existence of stages of divergence do not rely on strict gradualism
 they proposed, instead, a niche dimensionality hypothesis.
Thats what was new about their experiment. It wasnt natural selection
per se they tested, but an ecology-based flavor of evolutionary theory that has received almost
no focused empirical attention, despite its potential for complementing more geographic
and genetic hypotheses.
All they recorded were small trends in coloration and behavioral changes.
No new organs or beneficial structures were reported, nor did they
discuss previously-reported problems about the phylogeny of walking sticks,
such as the apparent re-evolution of wings three times
(see 05/28/2003 and 01/16/2003),
to say nothing of the origin of wings in the first place (04/02/2008).
Another thing left unstated was whether the walking-stick descendants were still
interfertile with their unexamined cousins, to prove that a new species had
emerged (at least, according to the biological species definition of species as
members of a population that can produce fertile offspring).
Most significantly, they failed to show whether any new
genetic information emerged. Even Bible-believing creationists do not dispute
that coloration differences and other horizontal sorting of traits
can occur by natural selection within created kinds. This kind of natural
selection can lead to dramatic differences, they say, such as donkeys and zebras,
or mammoths and elephants.
As valuable as field experiments are, the procedures these scientists followed omitted
some important tests. They did not repeat the experiment with other species or use controls. They failed to
follow up and observe whether the insect progeny reverted to wild type after the artificial
conditions were removed. The paper acknowledged, though, a number of additional factors that could have
blurred the inferences they drew. (Also of note: father Darwin got no mention in their original paper.)
Nevertheless, the press release article announced this as a great
vindication of Darwins theory of natural selection. Darwin, of course,
extended his principle far beyond color changes in walking sticks. He developed it into
a universal principle that produces humans from bacteria over time. Astrobiologists
routinely extend natural selection even further,
applying it as a universal natural law even alien life must obey.
Wherever life is found, one conclusion is sure to follow: Darwinian evolution
will have been vindicated  after the fact.
1. Patrik Nosil and Cristina P. Sandoval, Ecological Niche Dimensionality and the Evolutionary Diversification of Stick Insects,
Public Library
of Science One, 3(4): e1907 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001907.

These articles, like building blocks of lie
(03/19/2008), are
typical of the daily Darwin fare fed to the public by the media. Were collecting enough of them to
build a monument to dupidity (03/13/2008 commentary).
Each article invoked evolutionary explanations for observations that were already
in the bag, so to speak. In philosophy of science, explanatory inference can work
for post-dicted observations as well as pre-dicted observations; the logic is the same.
However, there is a built-in logical fallacy in prediction called affirming
the consequent. It goes: p predicts q, q happens, therefore p explains
q. The problem of underdetermination of theories by evidence shows
that there are always other theories that could explain the evidence just as well.
That is why Karl Popper repudiated prediction as having any value in scientific explanations.
Instead, he proposed falsification as a test of a good theory. Historical studies of science
show, however, that few scientists ever give up on a theory that has been falsified.
W. V. Quine argued in 1951 that scientists are more likely to adjust strands at the
periphery of their web of belief than abandon it because of anomalies.
These considerations are among many in 20th century philosophy of science
that have undermined the simple faith that science is on a progressive path to the truth.
Thomas Kuhn caused a furor in 1962 when he argued that scientists are
blinded by the ruling paradigm in which they work. The paradigm, or explanatory
viewpoint most widely accepted at the time, determines the questions worth asking, the
scientific approach to answer them, and what counts as evidence. It even determines the concepts
and language used to do science. Scientists, he said, do not work to falsify paradigms;
they work to confirm them and thus receive affirmation from their peer group.
Pursued to the extreme, his line of thinking
decouples scientific practice from truth-seeking altogether, and reduces it to an absurdity:
science is what scientists do. Though Kuhn didnt go that far, some did.
They doubted that science has any case for epistemic privilege over other avenues of
investigation.

Some offer the rebuttal that science must be true because it works. This, however,
is a pragmatic argument, not a logical argument. Even if a theory provides success
(or satisfaction) at explanation, prediction, and control, that is no guarantee it is
true. A look at history shows this. Civilizations throughout history, and
modern science in recent Western history, have trusted in ideas that are now
considered wrong, even though they provided their adherents at the time with remarkable degrees
of success at explanation, prediction and control. Ptolemaic astronomy satisfied
its believers for 1500 years, then Copernican, then Keplerian astronomy  but now
we know that the planets do not move in ellipses (because a whole set of additional
motions at higher levels precludes a closed loop). Newtonian mechanics for centuries represented the
pinnacle of scientific truth  only to be doubted in the 20th century with the rise of
relativity and quantum mechanics. String theory and dark energy continue to show
that a comprehensive understanding of the basic structure of matter is lacking; how much
more so for biology, where natural laws are hard to come by?

Exercise: Read this astronomy article on
Space.com
and ask how strong is the connection between the observations and the explanations offered.

The dust from Kuhns Structure of
Scientific Revolutions has yet to settle, even if he overstated the case.
His little book launched whole new university departments and fields of study.
Researchers started putting science itself under the microscope. Some portrayed
science as a cultural
phenomenon, complete with its own sociology, rhetoric and history. Though the
pendulum has swung back a bit toward scientific realism (the assumption
that science does deal in fairly reliable accounts of external reality), its more
from weariness of the science wars than any logical or epistemological victory.
Most philosophers and knowledgeable scientists today realize that scientists can no
longer blithely assume that what they are
doing is objective or has a necessary connection to truth or reality. Sociological, rhetorical, historical
and political factors are non-trivial influences in what passes for science in a given era or culture.
How strong are these influences? There is a broad spectrum of opinion, with no agreement.
If anything in science today fits the Kuhnian vision of normal science
being an effort to force-fit observations to a consensus paradigm, it is Darwinism. Evolutionary
biologists deceive themselves into thinking what they do is understand and explain reality by
objective standards and methods (a position known as logical positivism or scientism).
Their critics, looking in from the outside, are convinced the evolutionists have blinders on.
From their vantage point outside the paradigm, evolutionists are simply putting
a Darwinian shine on the observations, no matter what observations come along
(12/17/2007 commentary). They are asking
meaningless questions and giving self-reinforcing answers. Is this not obvious from
the examples above? If so, any resolution to this
impasse will require logical and rhetorical arguments as well as evidential arguments.
At the present, the Darwinians are controlling the rhetorical front from sheer
clout over scientific institutions, schools, the courts and the media. That could change.
A majority of the public is upset that only their side gets told.
Darwinism has become a kind of world religion that, having gained ascendancy, no longer
questions its assumptions. Worse, it imposes its paradigm on the world:
both on the world of nature (demanding explanation in terms of the paradigm) and on the world of people
(demanding compliance).
We have seen that the only requirement to explain anything these days is to say,
Darwin told us so. Moreover, anyone who
doubts the paradigm is labeled dangerous  not to the consensus, but to science
itself! One has to go along to get along.
Acceptance into the cult requires abandonment of all other explanatory systems, and allegiance
to the Darwin Party statement of faith, encapsulated succinctly in their childrens song,

When animals crawled ashore, there was nothing to eat. Why evolution is like silly putty, from
04/30/2002.

Mars Lacks Safety Shield for Humans 04/03/2008
April 3, 2008  Forget all those optimistic, futuristic sci-fi tales of humans
landing on Mars. It isnt safe, said
Space.com.
NASAs space radiation program doubts that a human body could survive prolonged
exposure to space. This is a problem for long stays on the moon, too.
The magnetic field of Earth protects humanity from
radiation in space that can damage or kill cells, Charles K. Choi wrote.
Once beyond this shield, people become far more vulnerable.
Another article on Space.com
showed that solar tsunamis on the sun cause coronal mass ejections that
can launch damaging material at Earth and the other the planets.
Earthlings are protected by the home planets magnetic field, but astronauts
would be exposed to the full brunt of the explosions.
Current ideas for shielding from high-energy cosmic rays and solar eruptions are
impractical. Would astronauts want to stay imprisoned in a lava tube?

No worries, mate. Seth Shostak just told us our
planet aint privileged (04/01/2008). Well throw another
prawn on the Mars barbie and let Ol' Sol cook it up fine and dandy. Still worried?
We got lots of lava tubes. Were all mates down unda.
Next headline on:Human Body 
Health 
Physics 
Solar System

Darwin and Complexity: Another Genetic Solution? 04/02/2008
April 2, 2008  It remains one of the biggest obstacles to belief in evolution that a
random, unguided process could build an eye, a wing or any of thousands of complex
structures that abound in living things on earth. To a Darwinist, who sees all
life in terms of common ancestry, none of these structures existed in the first cell.
Evolutionary theory is an attempt to reduce the challenge of lifes complexity to small changes at
the genetic level that, though contingent, exhibit some law-like behavior that can produce increasing
complexity over millions of years.
Does a new paper in Nature1 succeed at making Darwins mechanism plausible?
The team from Yale, Washington University in St. Louis, and University
of Sussex realized they were tackling one of the big questions.
As perceived by Darwin, they began, starting with the Big Man of evolutionary
theory himself, evolutionary adaptation by the processes of mutation and
selection is difficult to understand for complex features that
are the product of numerous traits acting in concert, for example the eye
or the apparatus of flight. They didnt use the ID-tainted
phrase irreducible complexity but the reference was clear.
Their paper is rather thick in jargon and math, but a somewhat simplistic
interpretation was reported by PhysOrg.
In short, they knew that they had to navigate between a Scylla and Charybdis of genetic
catastrophes. Darwin, of course, knew nothing of DNA and genes. Evolutionary
theory evolved into the neo-Darwinian synthesis in the 1930s to incorporate the 20th-century
findings about genetics, mutations, and molecular biology  then underwent successive
descent with modification as the structure of DNA and proteins was elucidated.
What are the dangerous extremes? The first is dilution.
R. A. Fisher worried in 1930 that any beneficial mutation would channel or canalize
an organism onto a fitness island, and that mutations would be diluted in more complex
systems. The other is called pleiotropy: mutations, even if
involving just one gene, tend to affect multiple traits. If a developmental gene
mutates, for instance, the change could have a ripple effect through numerous organs
and systems. This has been called the cost of complexity 
the more complex a system, the more a mutation may damage than build things.
By analogy, consider a change in a power supply on a computer that burns a memory
chip and makes a printer unavailable. So if a complex animal or plant becomes
canalized, it loses evolvability to gain more complexity; if pleiotropy
is universal, the organism could die.
The authors bred several generations of mice. They measured genetic effects
on body size when they let separate groups inbreed, and then cross-breed. Particularly,
they measured 102 genetic effects on 70 skeletal characteristics. Then, they
performed a mathematical analysis to try to estimate the effects of pleiotropy.
The more they massaged the data (adding various assumptions and making decisions about
relevance), the more two findings emerged: pleiotropy only tends to affect a few characters, not a lot.
Second, a mutation can hold its own: a mutation for one trait has
more effect when more traits are affected. This suggests that evolution
of higher organisms does not suffer a cost of complexity, they said, because most
mutations affect few traits and the size of the effects does not decrease with pleiotropy.
They believe their results affect predictions about the consequences of pleiotropy in
two ways. First, they alleviate Fishers worry that mutations affect all traits (universal
pleiotropy). Second, they undermined the assumption that mutations are additive in a linear fashion
(constant total effect). Mutations are neither diluted by complexity nor
magnified by pleiotropy. Evolution navigates a safe path through the
catastrophic extremes. They concluded on a somewhat speculative yet triumphant note:

The constant-total-effect model, however, has the consequence that the average effect
per character decreases and thus the rate of response to directional selection also
decreases, leading to another cost of complexity prediction.
However, our data show that the total effects of mutation actually increase with pleiotropy.
It therefore seems that in real organisms the combination of restricted rather than universal
pleiotropy, and increasing total effects, could be seen as evolutions answer
to the challenges of evolving complex organisms with random variation and selection.

Gunter Wagner, the lead author, used a homey analogy for the lay people reading the
PhysOrg summary.
You wouldnt expect to make a lot of random adjustments  at the same time 
to tune up a car, said Wagner. Similarly, it appears that tuning up a
complex trait in a living organism is well coordinated and the effects of pleiotropy
are more focused than we thought. You should be able to drive away with that.2
1. Wagner, Kenney-Hunt, Pavlicev, Peck, Waxman and Cheverud,
Pleiotropic scaling of gene effects and the 'cost of complexity',
Nature
452, 470-472 (27 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature06756.
2. That is, unless you ponder the fact that cars are usually built and tuned up by intelligent agents,
not random mutations.

Its tempting to want to be gentle with these Darwinists. After all, didnt
they do all the right scientific things? They published their work in a peer-reviewed
journal. They used scientific jargon (to the hilt). They used mathematics,
the language of science. Look; they even did experiments on lab mice. What
could be more scientific? What does a Darwinist have to do these days to get a
little respect from the Visigoths and get them to stop the siege?
How about telling the truth. We were told this paper was going to
be about Darwins grand story that eyes (03/31/2008), wings and other
complex structures could emerge by blind processes of random mutation and natural selection.
Instead, what we got was a thick fogma (05/14/2007) of bluffing
about everything but the main point. The question of evolution of complex
structures kept standing there, like a trumpeting, stomping elephant in the room, with these
guys quibbling, as if down on their knees examining carpet dust under a magnifying glass,
about correlation coefficients of specific genes and their relationships
to other genes and microscopic skeletal changes within one
species of animal, who already have eyes, and were apparently not embarking on an
origin of species project via a random walk. Irrelevant details that
miss the main point are not worthy of a respectful response.
Why irrelevant? Because they started with lab mice, and the ended
with lab mice, and no evolution whatsoever occurred! The mice were one
species, interfertile, the whole time. Did they watch an eye or a wing evolve?
No! Did they observe the emergence of new complexity and order? No!
Did their lab mice sprout wings and take off? No! Did any mutation lead
to any measurable improvement in fitness? No!
Did they observe anything that a young-earth creationist would have any trouble with?
No! Did they accomplish anything to vindicate Darwin? No! None of
their findings contributed a micro-meme to Darwins myth unless one was
already committed to it from the beginning. Its the girder over the Grand
Canyon again, suspended in mid-air from a helicopter (re-read the 05/22/2002
commentary).
They cannot assume that the critics are going to trust the Darwinian web of belief,
because the critics already know it is insufficient to support the weight of empirical
evidence required (Cambrian explosion, molecular machines, irreducible complexity, etc.).
Darwinism can no longer be regarded as a default position. A few irrelevant details about
how genetic mutations might be able to navigate between the extremes of universal
pleiotropy and dilution, within one species of mice, according to a rigged mathematical
model, is not enough to pay the cost of complexity. The Darwinists have been in default
on this tax for 149 years. Such details do not provide either progressive or cumulative
currency for Darwins account, when so much other observational evidence is draining it.
Responding that, according to our own records, we dont owe any Complexity Tax, is a bald lie.
Making small payments in counterfeit currency from your own presses wont work, either.
The Visigoth tax collectors (05/09/2006) demand,
stop lobbing pennies over the wall and lower the drawbridge.
We have you surrounded.
You can bet these scientists are not as thick as their jargon about what is
going on in the Darwin wars. Critics have been hammering them on this with increasing intensity ever
since Origin of Species hit London shelves. They are sick and tired of 149 years
of bluffing, speculation and storytelling about how eyes and wings came into existence by
chance. This is now 2008. Everybody knows how much more complex biology
turned out to be than Darwin ever imagined. His Victorian-progressive myth,
like a tottering wall, cannot survive another coat of whitewash and fancy frescoes.
The Darwin Party usurpers need to stop slapping one anothers backs about how clever
they are, and go out to face the revolt. They need to answer the
ultimatum signed by 700 scientists
surrounding Darwins Castle, who shout in unison, We are skeptical of claims for the ability of
random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.
Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.
Its another safe bet this is the best the Darwinists could come up with.
The authors hail from Yale and two other distinguished pro-Darwin universities. It was
published in the most prestigious pro-Darwin scientific journal, Nature, where publishing
real estate is scarce and each entry goes through multiple rounds of editorial screening.
In light of the outcry and controversy these days, if the Darwinists had a better defense for the most
controversial claim in the theory, they surely would have published it. Instead,
we got a bunch of hand-waving, some water-balloon arguments that are wobbly and all wet, and a
fallacious anthropomorphic statement that somehow
pleoiotropic mutation is evolutions answer to the challenge.
What this amounts to is an admission of futility. A sufficiently weak
defense is indistinguishable from capitulation. Deduction: Darwinism is de facto defunct.
It is in default on its Complexity Tax because it is bankrupt.
Watch Expelled, join the rebellion, break down this
wall, kick the rascals out, clear out the fogma, restore academic freedom, and bring
back honesty to the venerable halls of science.
Next headline on:Darwin and Evolutionary Theory 
Genetics

Fooling Oneself About Aliens 04/01/2008
April 1, 2008  Would you give a Bible to a Neanderthal, or invite a porpoise
to your church? Who would ask such questions? Seth Shostak would  director
of the SETI Institute. On Space.com,
he speculated about alien sociology.
Shostak wrote the weekly SETI column for Space.com
to answer critics who think
that broadcasting our presence to aliens could be dangerous. The answer, of
course, falls within the discipline of alien sociology  a field in which the data are,
shall we say, sparse, he admitted up front. Indeed, since we have no
idea what the mores or motivations of extraterrestrials might be, you might conclude
that, really, theres nothing we can say about whether the aliens would come here or not.
Nevertheless, he dismantled each of the Hollywood sets. They would
not want to breed with us, use our resources, make earth their vacation home, colonize our planet
or kill us off to wipe out the competition. Speculating about these things, he said, is better
than the know-nothing approach. After all, weve unraveled
a few things about astronomy and physics, if not much about alien comportment.
Here was the context of the bibles-to-Neanderthals idea:

Other suggestions about why they might visit include forestalling competition in the
Milky Way marketplace, proselytizing, or just learning more about us. Its
not clear that any of these goals requires killing us, of course, but the
logic is wobbly anyway. Any beings that actually could come here will be far
beyond us in technological accomplishment. Imagine if you could visit the
Neanderthals. Would you worry about commercial competition? Would you
give them bibles? Remember: these are (nearly) the same species as you are.
The aliens wont be. I dare say you wouldnt try convincing porpoises to
join your church.
Then again, theres that last point: they just want to learn
more about us. Well, perhaps so. Maybe thats really whats
interesting about Homo sapiens. Not grabbing our habitat, saving
our souls (or our environment), or subverting our industrial output  but
assaying our culture. Im willing to consider that even very advanced
beings might find our culture mildly worthy of study.

Thus, Shostak convinced himself to his own satisfaction that the aliens are friendly.
The Wise Old Extraterrestrials (03/17/2008)
will tune in to our broadcasts, not because they think
we are special or that our hunk of real estate is terribly privileged,
but because they might be mildly curious about just one more species that is
Kind of like another weird fish found in the Atlantic
(01/16/2008).

Alien sociology; good grief. Heres another
case of a so-called scientist waxing eloquent about nothing
(03/12/2004). You thought science was about
things we could observe.
Shostak is amusing to read, but should his speculations be considered any
more academically rich (despite his science backdrop) than those of theologians who speculate about the
nature of angels and devils? At least they have some texts to refer to.
The Bible (capital B here) that Shostak would not think a Neanderthal would understand
(but cf. 03/18/2008) actually says quite a lot
about angels. One could argue there is more support for the science of angel sociology than
for alien sociology, for which there is zero evidence. SETI has no data. To date, it is a body of mere
speculation based on assumption-driven probabilities. Should it be viewed as
somehow more scientific than theology, just because its practitioners use computers and radio
telescopes? So do theologians (computers and TV satellite dishes, at least).
That Bible also teaches that the earth, though small, is
privileged  not only because its the handiwork of God, but because its a place He visited
in human form. It also tells us that humans are special, not so much
for their biology as for the sacrifice their Creator made out of His love for them.
Thats why the original Neanderthal man, an intelligent and wise theologian
named Joachim Neander (see 10/26/2001), wrote
a hymn proclaiming Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation.
Shostak appeared briefly in the film The Privileged Planet,
arguing that unless our planet is extremely special, miraculous almost, there should be
hundreds of thousands of others like it. Thats pure speculation
driven by his evolutionary assumptions.
Shostak pulled a fast switch in his article. Dont be
April-fooled by it. His career is
Searching for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, SETI, not SOS, Searching for
Other Souls. The reason we dont invite porpoises to church is because
they are not souls. A soul has more than intelligence. Animals can be
very intelligent, and even express what look like real emotions. A soul has
that and much more: it is a
rational, free moral agent, endowed with the breath of life as a living soul
by its Creator. It makes moral choices on purpose, not on porpoise instinct.
A soul can also reason abstractly, understand and choose between right and wrong, comprehend God,
exercise true altruistic love, and live forever.
Evolutionists have a hard enough task explaining how intelligence could evolve
without having to explain what a soul is. If they want to argue a soul is a
phantom artifact of blind selection processes, guess what? They just
April-fooled themselves!  because now they must deny their own rational choices.
Thats why Psalm
53 says only a fool is an atheist. Its not saying atheists are
unintelligent. Shostak is obviously highly intelligent. So is Dawkins
and Hitchens and Sam Harris. Intelligent people can still do foolish things,
though, like pulling the intellectual rug out from under their own feet, and sawing off the
philosophical branch they are sitting on. Its the intellectual malady
we named sophoxymoronia (02/02/2008 commentary)
that makes April Fools Day last 366 x 24 x 7. (It is Leap Year, you know.
Dont use that as an excuse to make intellectual leaps.)
Next headline on:SETI 
Dumb Ideas

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Resorting to ad hominem attacks based on silly
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Keep up the good work!!
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I tell everyone that gives me an opening about your site. God is working through you. Please dont stop telling us how to see the lies or leading us in celebrating the truth. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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I sure hope you get a mountain of encouraging email, you deserve it.
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The work you do is very important.
Please dont ever give up. God bless the whole team.
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I thank you for it.
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so very adeptly and adroitly undress the emperor daily; so much so one
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A million thanks for your site.
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Thank God for ... Creation
Evolution Headlines. This site is right at the cutting edge in the debate
over bio-origins and is crucial in working to undermine the
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I hope a book is in the works!
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(secretary of a creation society in the UK)

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Did man and simien [sic] evovlve [sic] at random from a common ancestor? Or did God guide this evolution?
I dont know. But all things, including the laws of nature, originate from God....
To deny evolution is to deny Gods creation. To embrace evolution is to not only embrace his creation,
but to better appreciate it.
(a student in Saginaw, Michigan)

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exposes the bankruptcy of the evolutionary worldview.
(a student at Northern Michigan U)

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it soon became my favorite Evolution resource site on the web. I visit several times a
day cause I cant wait for the next update. Thats pathetic, I know ...
but not nearly as pathetic as Evolution, something you make completely obvious with your snappy,
intelligent commentary on scientific current events. It should be a textbook for science
classrooms around the country. You rock!
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Thanks so much for your great work -- and your wonderful humor.
(a pastor in Virginia)

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I really appreciate what you are doing with Creation-Evolution Headlines. I
tell everybody I think might be interested, to check it out.
(a systems analyst in Tennessee)

I would like to thank you for your service from which I stand to benefit a lot.
(a Swiss astrophysicist)

I enjoy very much reading your materials.
(a law professor in Portugal)

Thanks for your time and thanks for all the work on the site.
It has been a valuable resource for me.
(a medical student in Kansas)

Creation-Evolution Headlines is a terrific resource. The articles are
always current and the commentary is right on the mark.
(a molecular biologist in Illinois)

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anti-evolution website. With almost giddy anticipation, I check
it several times a week for the latest postings. May God bless you and
empower you to keep up this FANTASTIC work!
(a financial analyst in New York)

I read your pages on a daily basis and I would like to let you know
that your hard work has been a great help in increasing my knowledge
and growing in my faith. Besides the huge variety of scientific
disciplines covered, I also enormously enjoy your great sense of humor
and your creativity in wording your thoughts, which make reading your
website even more enjoyable.
(a software developer in Illinois)

THANK YOU for all the work you do to make this wonderful resource! After
being regular readers for a long time, this year weve incorporated your
site into our home education for our four teenagers. The Baloney Detector
is part of their Logic and Reasoning Skills course, and the Daily Headlines
and Scientists of the Month features are a big part of our curriculum for an
elective called Science Discovery Past and Present. What a wonderful
goldmine for equipping future leaders and researchers with the tools of
clear thinking!
(a home school teacher in California)

What can I say  I LOVE YOU! 
I READ YOU ALMOST EVERY DAY I copy and send out to various folks.
I love your sense of humor, including your politics and of course your faith.
I appreciate and use your knowledge  What can I say  THANK YOU
 THANK YOU  THANK YOU  SO MUCH.
(a biology major, former evolutionist, now father of college students)

I came across your site while browsing through creation & science links. I love the work you do!
(an attorney in Florida)

Love your commentary and up to date reporting. Best site for evolution/design info.
(a graphic designer in Oregon)

I am an ardent reader of your site. I applaud your efforts and pass on
your website to all I talk to. I have recently given your web site info
to all my grandchildren to have them present it to their science
teachers.... Your Supporter and fan..God bless you all...
(a health services manager in Florida)

Why your readership keeps doubling: I came across your website at a time when I was just getting to know what creation science is all about. A friend of mine was telling me about what he had been finding out. I was highly skeptical and sought to read as many pro/con articles as I could find and vowed to be open-minded toward his seemingly crazy claims. At first I had no idea of the magnitude of research and information thats been going on. Now, Im simply overwhelmed by the sophistication and availability of scientific research and information on what I now know to be the truth about creation.
Your website was one of dozens that I found in my search. Now, there are only a handful of sites I check every day. Yours is at the top of my list... I find your news page to be the most insightful and well-written of the creation news blogs out there. The quick wit, baloney detector, in-depth scientific knowledge you bring to the table and the superb writing style on your site has kept me interested in the day-to-day happenings of what is clearly a growing movement. Your site ... has given me a place to point them toward to find out more and realize that theyve been missing a huge volume of information when it comes to the creation-evolution issue.
Another thing I really like about this site is the links to articles in science journals and news references. That helps me get a better picture of what youre talking about.... Keep it up and I promise to send as many people as will listen to this website and others.
(an Air Force Academy graduate stationed in New Mexico)

Im a small town newspaper editor in southwest Wyoming. Were pretty
isolated, and finding your site was a great as finding a gold mine. I read
it daily, and if theres nothing new, I re-read everything. I follow links.
I read the Scientist of the Month. Its the best site Ive run across. Our
local school board is all Darwinist and determined to remain that way.
(a newspaper editor in Wyoming)

 have been reading your page for about 2 years or so....
I read it every day. I ...am well educated, with a BA in Applied Physics
from Harvard and an MBA in Finance from Wharton.
(a reader in Delaware)

 I came across your website by accident about 4 months ago and look at it every day....
About 8 months ago I was reading a letter to the editor of the Seattle Times that was written
by a staunch anti-Creationist and it sparked my interest enough to research the
topic and within a week I was yelling, my whole lifes education has been a lie!!!
Ive put more study into Biblical Creation in the last 8 months than any other topic in my life.
Past that, through resources like your website...Ive been able to convince my father (professional mathematician and amateur geologist), my best friend (mechanical engineer and fellow USAF Academy Grad/Creation Science nutcase), my pastor (he was the hardest to crack), and many others to realize the Truth of Creation.... Resources like your website help the rest of us at the grassroots level drum up interest in the subject. And regardless of what the major media says: Creationism is spreading like wildfire, so please keep your website going to help fan the flames.
(an Air Force Academy graduate and officer)

I love your site! I **really** enjoy reading it for several specific reasons: 1.It uses the latest (as in this month!) research as a launch pad for opinion; for years I have searched for this from a creation science viewpoint, and now, Ive found it. 2. You have balanced fun with this topic. This is hugely valuable! Smug Christianity is ugly, and I dont perceive that attitude in your comments. 3. I enjoy the expansive breadth of scientific news that you cover. 4. I am not a trained scientist but I know evolutionary bologna/(boloney) when I see it; you help me to see it. I really appreciate this.
(a computer technology salesman in Virginia)

I love your site. Thats why I was more than happy to
mention it in the local paper.... I mentioned your site as the place
where..... Every Darwin-cheering news article is
reviewed on that site from an ID perspective. Then
the huge holes of the evolution theory are exposed,
and the bad science is shredded to bits, using real
science.
(a project manager in New Jersey)

Ive been reading your site almost daily for about three years. I have
never been more convinced of the truthfulness of Scripture and the faithfulness of God.
(a system administrator and homeschooling father in Colorado)

I use the internet a lot to catch up on news back
home and also to read up on the creation-evolution controversy, one of my favourite topics.
Your site is always my first port of call for the latest news and views and I really appreciate
the work you put into keeping it up to date and all the helpful links you provide. You are a
beacon of light for anyone who wants to hear frank, honest conclusions instead of the usual diluted
garbage we are spoon-fed by the media.... Keep up the good work and know that youre changing lives.
(a teacher in Spain)

I am grateful to you for your site and look forward to reading new
stories.... I particularly value it for being up to date with what is going on.
(from the Isle of Wight, UK)

[Creation-Evolution Headlines] is the place to go for late-breaking
news [on origins]; it has the most information and the quickest turnaround.
Its incredible  I dont know how you do it.
I cant believe all the articles you find. God bless you!
(a radio producer in Riverside, CA)

Just thought I let you know how much I enjoy
reading your Headlines section. I really appreciate
how you are keeping your ear to the ground in so
many different areas. It seems that there is almost
no scientific discipline that has been unaffected
by Darwins Folly.
(a programmer in aerospace from Gardena, CA)

I enjoy reading the comments on news articles on your site very much. It is incredible
how much refuse is being published in several scientific fields regarding evolution.
It is good to notice that the efforts of true scientists have an increasing influence at schools,
but also in the media.... May God bless your efforts and open the eyes of the blinded evolutionists
and the general public that are being deceived by pseudo-scientists.... I enjoy the site very much
and I highly respect the work you and the team are doing to spread the truth.
(an ebusiness manager in the Netherlands)

I discovered your site through a link at certain website...
It has greatly helped me being updated with the latest development in science and with
critical comments from you. I also love your baloney detector
and in fact have translated some part of the baloney detector into our language (Indonesian).
I plan to translate them all for my friends so as to empower them.
(a staff member of a bilateral agency in West Timor, Indonesia)

...absolutely brilliant and inspiring.
(a documentary film producer, remarking on the
07/10/2005 commentary)

I found your site several months ago and within weeks
had gone through your entire archives.... I check in several times a day for further
information and am always excited to read the new
articles. Your insight into the difference between
what is actually known versus what is reported has
given me the confidence to stand up for what I
believe. I always felt there was more to the story,
and your articles have given me the tools to read
through the hype....
You are an invaluable help and I commend your efforts.
Keep up the great work.
(a sound technician in Alberta)

I discovered your site (through a link from a blog) a few weeks ago and I cant stop reading it....
I also enjoy your insightful and humorous commentary at the end of each story. If the evolutionists
blindness wasnt so sad, I would laugh harder.
I have a masters degree in mechanical engineering from a leading University. When I read the descriptions, see the pictures, and watch the movies of the inner workings of the cell, Im absolutely amazed.... Thanks for bringing these amazing stories daily. Keep up the good work.
(an engineer in Virginia)

I stumbled across your site several months ago and have
been reading it practically daily. I enjoy the inter-links
to previous material as well as the links to the quoted
research. Ive been in head-to-head debate with a
materialist for over a year now. Evolution is just one of
those debates. Your site is among others that have been a
real help in expanding my understanding.
(a software engineer in Pennsylvania)

I was in the April 28, 2005 issue of Nature [see 04/27/2005
story] regarding the rise of intelligent design in the universities. It was through your website
that I began my journey out of the crisis of faith which was mentioned in that article. It was an honor to see you all highlighting the article in Nature. Thank you for all you have done!
(Salvador Cordova, George Mason University)

I shudder to think of the many ways in which you mislead readers, encouraging them to build a faith based on misunderstanding and ignorance. Why dont you allow people to have a faith that is grounded in a fuller understanding of the world?...
Your website is a sham.
(a co-author of the paper reviewed in the 12/03/2003
entry who did not appreciate the unflattering commentary. This led to a cordial
interchange, but he could not divorce his reasoning from the science vs. faith dichotomy,
and resulted in an impasse over definitions  but, at least, a more mutually respectful dialogue.
He never did explain how his paper supported Darwinian macroevolution. He just claimed
evolution is a fact.)

I absolutely love creation-evolution news. As a Finnish university student very
interested in science, I frequent your site to find out about all the new science
stuff thats been happening  you have such a knack for finding all this
information! I have been able to stump evolutionists with knowledge gleaned from
your site many times.
(a student in Finland)

I love your site and read it almost every day. I use it for my science class and
5th grade Sunday School class. I also challenge Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers to
get on the site to check out articles against the baloney they are taught in school.
(a teacher in Los Gatos, CA)

I have spent quite a few hours at Creation Evolution Headlines in the past week
or so going over every article in the archives. I thank you for such an informative
and enjoyable site. I will be visiting often and will share this link with others.
[Later]  I am back to May 2004 in the archives. I figured I should be farther
back, but there is a ton of information to digest.
(a computer game designer in Colorado)

Hey Friends,
Check out this site: www.creationsafaris.com.
This is a fantastic resource for the whole family.... a fantastic reference library with summaries,
commentaries and great links that are added to
dailyarchives go back five years.
(a reader who found us in Georgia)

I just wanted to drop you a note telling you that at www.BornAgainRadio.com,
Ive added a link to your excellent Creation-Evolution news site.
(a radio announcer)

I cannot understand
why anyone would invest so much time and effort to a website of sophistry and casuistry.
Why twist Christian apology into an illogic pretzel to placate your intellect?
Isnt it easier to admit that your faith has no basis -- hence, faith.
It would be extricate [sic] yourself from intellectual dishonesty -- and
from bearing false witness.
Sincerely, Rev. [name withheld] (an ex-Catholic, apostate Christian Natural/Scientific pantheist)

Just wanted to let you folks know that we are consistent readers and truly appreciate
the job you are doing. God bless you all this coming New Year.
(from two prominent creation researchers/writers in Oregon)

Thanks so much for your site! It is brain candy!
(a reader in North Carolina)

I Love your site  probably a little too much. I enjoy the commentary
and the links to the original articles.
(a civil engineer in New York)

Ive had your Creation/Evolution Headlines site on my favourites list for
18 months now, and I can truthfully say that its one of the best on the Internet,
and I check in several times a week. The constant stream of new information on
such a variety of science issues should impress anyone, but the rigorous and
humourous way that every thought is taken captive is inspiring. Im pleased
that some Christians, and indeed, some webmasters, are devoting themselves to
producing real content that leaves the reader in a better state than when they found him.
(a community safety manager in England)

I really appreciate the effort that you are making to provide the public with
information about the problems with the General Theory of Evolution. It gives me
ammunition when I discuss evolution in my classroom. I am tired of the evolutionary
dogma. I wish that more people would stand up against such ridiculous beliefs.
(a science teacher in Alabama)

If you choose to hold an opinion that flies in the face of every piece of evidence
collected so far, you cannot be suprised [sic] when people dismiss your views.
(a former Christian software distributor, location not disclosed)

...the Creation Headlines is the best. Visiting your site...
is a standard part of my startup procedures every morning.
(a retired Air Force Chaplain)

I LOVE your site and respect the time and work you put into it. I read
the latest just about EVERY night before bed and send selection[s] out to others and
tell others about it. I thank you very much and keep up the good work (and
humor).
(a USF grad in biology)

Answering your invitation for thoughts on your site is not difficult because
of the excellent commentary I find. Because of the breadth and depth of erudition
apparent in the commentaries, I hope Im not being presumptuous in suspecting
the existence of contributions from a Truth Underground comprised of
dissident college faculty, teachers, scientists, and engineers. If thats
not the case, then it is surely a potential only waiting to be realized. Regardless,
I remain in awe of the care taken in decomposing the evolutionary cant that bombards
us from the specialist as well as popular press.
(a mathematician/physicist in Arizona)

Im from Quebec, Canada. I have studied in pure sciences and after in actuarial mathematics.
Im visiting this site 3-4 times in a week. Im learning a lot and this site gives me the opportunity to realize that this is a good time to be a creationist!
(a French Canadian reader)

You have a unique position in the Origins community.
Congratulations on the best current affairs news source on the origins net.
You may be able to write fast but your logic is fun to work through.
(a pediatrician in California)

Visit your site almost daily and find it very informative, educational and inspiring.
(a reader in western Canada)

I wish to thank you for the information you extend every day on your site.
It is truly a blessing!
(a reader in North Carolina)

I really appreciate your efforts in posting to this website. I find
it an incredibly useful way to keep up with recent research (I also check science
news daily) and also to research particular topics.
(an IT consultant from Brisbane, Australia)

I would just like to say very good job with the work done here,
very comprehensive. I check your site every day. Its great
to see real science directly on the front lines, toe to toe with the
pseudoscience that's mindlessly spewed from the prestigious
science journals.
(a biology student in Illinois)

Ive been checking in for a long time but thought Id leave you a
note, this time. Your writing on these complex topics is insightful,
informative with just the right amount of humor. I appreciate the hard
work that goes into monitoring the research from so many sources and then
writing intelligently about them.
(an investment banker in California)

Keep up the great work. You are giving a whole army of Christians
plenty of ammunition to come out of the closet (everyone else has).
Most of us are not scientists, but most of the people we talk to are not
scientists either, just ordinary people who have been fed baloney
for years and years.
(a reader in Arizona)

Keep up the outstanding work!
You guys really ARE making a difference!
(a reader in Texas)

I wholeheartedly agree with you when you say that science is not
hostile towards religion. It is the dogmatically religious that are
unwaveringly hostile towards any kind of science which threatens their
dearly-held precepts. Science (real, open-minded science) is not
interested in theological navel-gazing.
(anonymous)Note: Please supply your name and location when writing in. Anonymous attacks
only make one look foolish and cowardly, and will not normally be printed.
This one was shown to display a bad example.

I appreciate reading your site every day. It is a great way to keep
up on not just the new research being done, but to also keep abreast of the
evolving debate about evolution (Pun intended).... I find it an incredibly useful
way to keep up with recent research (I also check science news daily) and also
to research particular topics.
(an IT consultant in Brisbane, Australia)

I love your website.
(a student at a state university who used CEH when
writing for the campus newsletter)

....when you claim great uncertainty for issues that are fairly
well resolved you damage your already questionable credibility.
Im sure your audience loves your ranting, but if you know as much
about biochemistry, geology, astronomy, and the other fields you
skewer, as you do about ornithology, you are spreading heat, not
light.
(a professor of ornithology at a state university, responding to
the 09/10/2002 headline)

I wanted to let you know I appreciate your headline news style of
exposing the follies of evolutionism.... Your style gives us constant,
up-to-date reminders that over and over again, the Bible creation account
is vindicated and the evolutionary fables are refuted.
(a reader, location unknown)

You have a knack of extracting the gist of a technical paper,
and digesting it into understandable terms.
(a nuclear physicist from Lawrence Livermore Labs who worked
on the Manhattan Project)

After spending MORE time than I really had available going thru
your MANY references I want to let you know how much I appreciate
the effort you have put forth.
The information is properly documented, and coming from
recognized scientific sources is doubly valuable. Your
explanatory comments and sidebar quotations also add GREATLY
to your overall effectiveness as they 1) provide an immediate
interpretive starting point and 2) maintaining the readers
interest.
(a reader in Michigan)

I am a huge fan of the site, and check daily for updates.
(reader location and occupation unknown)

I just wanted to take a minute to personally thank-you and let
you know that you guys are providing an invaluable service!
We check your Web site weekly (if not daily) to make sure we have
the latest information in the creation/evolution controversy.
Please know that your diligence and perseverance to teach the
Truth have not gone unnoticed. Keep up the great work!
(a PhD scientist involved in origins research)

You've got a very useful and informative Web site going.
The many readers who visit your site regularly realize that it
requires considerable effort to maintain the quality level and
to keep the reviews current.... I hope you can continue your
excellent Web pages. I have recommended them highly to others.
(a reader, location and occupation unknown)

As an apprentice apologist, I can always find an article
that will spark a spirited debate. Keep em
coming! The Truth will prevail.
(a reader, location and occupation unknown)

Thanks for your web page and work. I try to drop by
at least once a week and read what you have. Im a
Christian that is interested in science (Im a mechanical
engineer) and I find you topics interesting and helpful.
I enjoy your lessons and insights on Baloney Detection.
(a year later):
I read your site 2 to 3 times a week; which Ive probably done for a couple
of years. I enjoy it for the interesting content, the logical arguments, what I can
learn about biology/science, and your pointed commentary.
(a production designer in Kentucky)

I look up CREV headlines every day. It is a wonderful
source of information and encouragement to me.... Your gift of
discerning the fallacies in evolutionists interpretation of
scientific evidence is very helpful and educational for me.
Please keep it up. Your website is the best I know of.
(a Presbyterian minister in New South Wales, Australia)

Ive written to you before, but just wanted to say again
how much I appreciate your site and all the work you put into it.
I check it almost every day and often share the contents
(and web address) with lists on which I participate.
I dont know how you do all that you do, but I am grateful
for your energy and knowledge.
(a prominent creationist author)

I am new to your site, but I love it! Thanks for updating
it with such cool information.
(a home schooler)

I love your site.... Visit every day hoping for another of your
brilliant demolitions of the foolish just-so stories of those
who think themselves wise.
(a reader from Southern California)

I visit your site daily for the latest news from science journals and other media,
and enjoy your commentary immensely. I consider your web site to be the
most valuable, timely and relevant creation-oriented site on the internet.
(a reader from Ontario, Canada)

Keep up the good work! I thoroughly enjoy your site.
(a reader in Texas)

Thanks for keeping this fantastic web site going. It is very
informative and up-to-date with current news including incisive
insight.
(a reader in North Carolina)

Great site! For all the Baloney Detector is impressive and a
great tool in debunking wishful thinking theories.
(a reader in the Netherlands)

Just wanted to let you know, your work is having quite an impact.
For example, major postings on your site are being circulated among the
Intelligent Design members....
(a PhD organic chemist)

Its like
opening a can of worms ... I love to click all the related links and
read your comments and the links to other websites, but this usually makes me late
for something else. But its ALWAYS well worth it!!
(a leader of a creation group)

I am a regular visitor to your website ... I am impressed
by the range of scientific disciplines your articles address.
I appreciate your insightful dissection of the often unwarranted conclusions
evolutionists infer from the data... Being a medical
doctor, I particularly relish the technical detail you frequently include in
the discussion living systems and processes. Your website continually
reinforces my conviction that if an unbiased observer seeks a reason for the
existence of life then Intelligent Design will be the unavoidable
conclusion.
(a medical doctor)

A church member asked me what I thought was the best creation web site.
I told him CreationSafaris.com.
(a PhD geologist)

I love your site... I check it every day for interesting
information. It was hard at first to believe in Genesis fully, but
now I feel more confident about the mistakes of humankind and that all
their reasoning amounts to nothing in light of a living God.
(a college grad)

Thank you so much for the interesting science links and comments
on your creation evolution headlines page ... it is very
informative.
(a reader from Scottsdale, AZ)

I still
visit your site almost every day, and really enjoy it. Great job!!!
(I also recommend it to many, many students.)
(an educational consultant)

I like what I seevery
much. I really appreciate a decent, calm and scholarly approach to the
whole issue... Thanks ... for this fabulous
endeavorits superb!

It is refreshing to read your comments. You have a knack to get to the heart of
the matter.
(a reader in the Air Force).

Love your website. It has well thought out structure and will help many
through these complex issues. I especially love the
Baloney Detector.
(a scientist).

I believe this is one of the best sites on the Internet.
I really like your side-bar of truisms.
Yogi [Berra] is absolutely correct. If I were a man of wealth, I would
support you financially.
(a registered nurse in Alabama, who found
us on TruthCast.com.)

WOW. Unbelievable.... My question is, do you sleep? ... Im utterly
impressed by your page which represents untold amounts of time and energy
as well as your faith.
(a mountain man in Alaska).

Just
wanted to say that I recently ran across your web site featuring science
headlines and your commentary and find it to be A++++, superb, a 10, a homerun
 I run out of superlatives to describe it! ... You can be sure I will
visit your site often  daily when possible  to gain the latest information
to use in my speaking engagements. Ill also do my part to help publicize
your site among college students. Keep up the good work. Your
material is appreciated and used.
(a college campus minister)

Every science student is familiar with the Periodic Table of the Elements.
It is one of the great patterns in nature
discovered by careful, painstaking work in chemistry by many scientists over many
years. The one who is most famous for putting the pieces together in a systematic
way is our scientist of the month, Dmitri Mendeleev.

The following quote
is taken from Pioneer Explorers of Intelligent Design: Scientists Who Made a
Difference by Dr. Donald DeYoung (BMH Books, 2006), p. 67.

One of 17 children, Mendeleev was told by his mother to
patiently search divine and scientific truth. He firmly believed
in Scripture, especially Proverbs 25:2 which says, It is the glory of
God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings to search out a matter.
Mendeleev thus saw chemistry as a royal and godly pursuit. He was led to
seek out the underlying order to the atomic elements based on their weights
and other properties. In Mendeleevs funeral procession in St. Petersburg,
Russia, his appreciative students carried a large banner displaying the
periodic table of the elements.

Coming from a religious family, Mendeleev naturally viewed the world as an orderly system
amenable to scientific investigation. It is said he first got the idea of
the periodic table in a dream, and the next day began working out the pattern.
As he was building the table, his belief that the pattern he saw emerging would
continue led him to take the intellectual leap of leaving spots blank in the table,
in faith believing that elements would be discovered to fill the blank spots. He
predicted the existence of gallium, germanium and scandium, for instance, and even
was able to predict some their properties by interpolating from other known elements
in similar positions on the table.

The story of the discovery of the periodic table is told in detail in A Meaningful
World by Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt (IVP Academic, 2006). They use
it as one of
many illustrations from history of how the arts and sciences reveal the underlying genius
and meaning in nature.

After Dmitris death, element 101 was named Mendelevium in his honor.
A crater on the moon also bears his name.

Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle
babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge  by
professing it some have strayed concerning the faith.

I Timothy 6:20-21

Song of the True Scientist

O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made
them all. The earth is full of Your possessions . . . . May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the
Lord rejoice in His works . . . . I will sing to the Lord s long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my
being. May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord. May sinners be
consumed from the earth, and the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!

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